Scientific Web sites and Applications Team blog
Everything you need to know about scientific web development at OD Nature...
The TILES web site opens
Today, we opened the TILES project web site to the public.
What is the TILES project about?
TILES is a strategic research network funded under the Brain-be programme of Belgian Science Policy. The project is devoted to the creation of a harmonized geological knowledgebase of the Belgian and southern Dutch part of the North Sea. Most innovatively, the geological resource will be quantified in 5 dimensions: space, depth, time, and associated uncertainties. A decision support system will function as a critical platform for the exchange of data, information and knowledge, also allowing for assessments of cross-border impacts of marine exploitation activities. This is key within the European Union's ambitious Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) aiming at protecting more effectively the marine environment across Europe.
SWAP's involvement:
TILES is the first project site to be published under our scientific web site umbrella. As this is a research project carried out through a consortium, we developed a site-specific stylesheet, including custom typographic choices, colours and branding. As always, we sat down with our client to properly estimate the needs over the projects's lifetime. This, combined with our Agile-like development workflow and the use of our ODiN web development framework (which will both be covered in future posts) allowed us to quickly draft layout options for approval. We subsequently took care of adding the content provided to us. A positive final site review then allowed for the web site to be made public.
We opted for a clean, contemporary style based on a monochromatic color scheme and Steve Matteson's Open Sans typefaces, which are optimised for legibility across print, web, and mobile interfaces.
Welcome to the SWAP Team blog
The first post on the SWAP blog is an introduction to our work and to the kind of information you may expect to see published here.
What's SWAP?
SWAP stands for Scientific Web sites and Applications. We are a small, client-oriented, reactive scientific web development team with OD Nature. Our mission is to develop sites and web apps for colleagues within the Directorate or for national/international research consortia in which OD Nature staff play a role.
What will be published here?
This blog will keep you up-to-date with recent web development carried out by SWAP and the latest scientific web sites that are or will be published under our "odnature.naturalsciences.be" umbrella.
On what sort of things is SWAP working?
We work on quite a lot of diffrent things! The official creation of our Directorate – made out of some former departments of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences – made it a logical obligation to rebuild our web presence from scratch.
Expertise at OD Nature spans a vast array of disciplines. To best convey the scientific work that we accomplish, we have adopted a dual approach:
- a general description of activities, aimed at the general public, is published on our corporate web site. SWAP's Team Leader plays an advisory role in this context and is involved as content co-editor, together with the Communication Team.
- More specialised content, which requires complex ad hoc development is directly developed and published by SWAP on the present web site (http://odnature.naturalsciences.be/) or under project-specific URLs, in close cooperation with OD Nature's other scientific teams and groups.
What type of content can I expect to find on this web site?
You can expect to see a very varied content on http://odnature.naturalsciences.be/. Here a few keywords that summarise the disciplines and types of content the SWAP team is involved with:
oceanography mathematical modelling operational marine forecasts environmental emergency response tools sediment transport the Belgica marine mammals conservation biology wildlife impact assessment threatened habitats remote sensing and satellite imagery ecosystem modelling eutrophication management numerous project web sites scientific conferences data access software ... and much more
Do you need a web site for your team or a project?
Recent highlights
25 January 2015
The renewed RV Belgica web site is available; research cruises and programmes for 2015 are online.
20 October 2014
The REMSEM team and its project web sites are now on odnature.naturalsciences.be.
03 October 2014
Learn about COHERENS, our modelling system for shallow waters.
17 September 2014
The IBISCA (Investigating the Biodiversity of Soil and Canopy Arthropods) project web site is ready.
9 September 2014
We've migrated a first batch of mumm.ac.be web sites to our OD Nature framework.
4 September 2014
The TILES web site opens. The TILES project is funded under the BRAIN-be call ‘Sustainable management of mineral and geological resources’ and coordinated by OD Nature.
1 September 2014
We're busy making our production server available. The first web sites will soon become available.