Marine Regions Gazetteer Web Services

Dealing with different names of geographic features or entities, VLIZ developed a standard, relational list of geographic names, coupled with information and maps of the geographic location of these features. The purpose of the gazetteer is to improve access and clarity of the different geographic, mainly marine names such as seas, sandbanks, ridges, bays or even standard sampling stations used in marine research. The geographic cover is global; however the gazetteer is focused on the Belgian Continental Shelf, the Scheldt Estuary and the Southern Bight of the North Sea.

The Marine Regions Gazetteer is accessible both for humans and machines in different ways:

- through the web portal by means of the search engine interface;

- through REST APIs;

- through SOAP calls;

- through Linked Data Event Streams;

- through an ad-hoc developed R Package: 'mregions'.

Identification

Date ( Creation ): 2005-01-01

Date ( Revision ): 2021-09-23

Status: Completed

Version: 1.0

Keywords: Marine

Keywords: Gazetteer service

Keywords: Geography

Keywords: Feature

Access constraints: License

Use limitation: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Other constraints: https://marineregions.org/disclaimer.php

Point of contact

Flanders Marine Institute - Marine Regions Team

OnLine resource: Search engine ( WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link )

OnLine resource: REST web services ( REST )

OnLine resource: SOAP web services ( SOAP )

OnLine resource: Linked Data Event Stream feed access point ( LDES )

OnLine resource: R package 'mregions' ( R )

Operation name: Marine Regions Gazetteer

Web site: https://marineregions.org/gazetteer.php

Description: Dealing with different names of geographic features or entities, VLIZ developed a standard, relational list of geographic names, coupled with information and maps of the geographic location of these features.

Function: The purpose of the gazetteer is to improve access and clarity of the different geographic, mainly marine names such as seas, sandbanks, ridges, bays or even standard sampling stations used in marine research.

Topic Category: Geographical names

Service Category: data analysis

Service Language: eng

Service TRL: TRL 9 – Actual system proven in operational environment

Service Funding: The maintenance and further development of Marine Regions relies on financial contributions, the time contributed by its editorial board, and support of its host institution: VLIZ. Marine Regions is currently funded through the LifeWatch Belgium project.