Partners

AquaRES is a network project coordinated by the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS), which contributes to the Freshwater Animal Diversity Assessment (FADA) database. Project partners are the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), that manages the World Register of Marine species and hosts it together with the Register of Antarctic Marine Species (RAMS). The Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) contributes to the management and networking of the RAMS database.

OD Nature

Operational Directorate Natural Environment, RBINS

The Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS) is a federal scientific institute. Its key mission includes fundamental research, scientific consulting, collection management, public dissemination and outreach.

Within the framework of the BioFresh project, RBINS was involved in the extension of the FADA databases and gained a rich experience in data mobilisation and integration in the freshwater community. It also has strong links to the Belgian GBIF node through the Belgian Biodiversity Platform.

Aaike De Wever is the coordinator of the project and scientific data manager of the FADA database. Michel Kapel is in charge of the IT support and developments related to FADA.
VLIZ

Flanders Marine Data and Information Centre, VLIZ

VLIZ is an autonomous institute with the legal status of a non-profit organisation. In addition to promoting marine scientific research in general, its main objectives are to serve as an international contact point and to provide marine scientific information to policy makers to develop their policy with regard to marine affairs.

The Flanders Marine Data and Information Centre (VMDC) of the Flanders Marine Institute aims at being a service-directed data and information center, with quick and open access to high quality data and information from a wide range of marine sciences. The main aim of the data and information center is to provide a service that will suit different target groups. The VMDC databases also support all coordination and information activities at VLIZ. A core task of the VLIZ is to map expertise in Flanders on a permanent basis and to present this expertise and data both in Belgium and abroad. VLIZ has a broad networks and close collaboration with other research and management organisations and international data systems such as the World Data System, EMODnet, etc.

Leen Vandepitte is promotor for the AquaRES project at VLIZ and is senior science officer for the data centre and scientific data manager for WoRMS. Bart Vanhoorne and Lorenzo Bovit are in charge of the IT developments at VLIZ for the AquaRES project.
ULB

Marine Biology Laboratory, ULB

Based at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB, Belgium), the marine biology laboratory carries out its research on the ecology of marine benthic invertebrates, with a special focus on echinoderms. The lab is closely associated to its equivalents of the Mons University (UMH), forming the “Centre Interuniversitaire de Biologie Marine” (CIBIM).

Bruno Danis is promotor for the AquaRES project at ULB. Quentin Jossart is a postdoctoral researcher at the ULB. In the AquaRES project, his main task is the coordination of the workshop.