The purpose of MarineRegions is to create a standard, relational list of geographic names, coupled with information and maps of the geographic location of these features. Marine Regions is an integration of the VLIMAR Gazetteer and the VLIZ Maritime Boundaries Geodatabase (MARBOUND). The VLIMAR Gazetteer is a database with geographic, mainly marine names such as seas, sandbanks, seamounts, ridges, bays or even standard sampling stations used in marine research. The geographic cover of the VLIMAR gazetteer is global but initially focused on the Belgian Continental Shelf and the Scheldt Estuary and the Southern Bight of the North Sea. Gradually more regional and global geographic information was added to VLIMAR and combining this information with the Maritime Boundaries database, representing the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the world, led to the creation of marineregions.org.​ In order to preserve the identity of the marine geographic objects from the database, and to name and locate the geographic resources on the web, MarineRegions promotes the Marine Regions Geographic IDentifier, or the MRGID. Developed by: MarineRegions is managed by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ). Funding for the creation of the VLIMAR gazetteer was provided initially through the EU Network of Excellence MarBEF, but also other European initiative such as EMODNet and Lifewatch provide the necessary funding for the maintenance and management of MarineRegions. Used data resources: MarineRegions uses several sources: marine boundaries, ecological classifications, fishing zones, thematic gazetteers, regional gazetteers, global gazetteers and several others. Web services: MarineRegions provides numerous web services which allow the user to have direct access to the geographic data, maps and metadata from a GIS desktop or for online applications. Currently MarineRegions provides the OGC services WMS, WFS and CSW.

The LifeWatch and EMODnet Biology QC Tool allows you to assess to what extend a dataset published on an IPT or a DwC-A file meets the EMODnet Biology Data Quality Criteria. This tool is based on the EMODnetBioCheck R package (https://github.com/EMODnet/EMODnetBiocheck) that was created using the obistools package (https://github.com/iobis/obistools) and it is available from the LifeWatch services at http://rshiny.lifewatch.be/BioCheck/. The Biocheck tool performs a detailed Quality Control on OBIS-env datasets and occurrence core dataset. It provides a way for a visual exploration of the dataset and highlights potential issues.

BVMtool is a set of R scripts automating marine biological valuation calculations based on the biological valuation concept as developed by Derous et al. 2007 and described by Deneudt et al 2013. Based on a recommended format for data input, the script facilitates the calculation of a number of valuation questions that are commonly solved when observational data on species densities are available. The results of the valuation questions are summarized in final scores for each ecosystem component and can be combined with the final results obtained for other ecosystem components. Subzones can be defined as raster grid cells of a desired size or can be based on polygons of a habitat classification provided by the user. The script also offers the possibility to run a number of quality control procedures on the input data, including a taxonomic quality control using the web services built on the World Register of Marine Species.

pyhydrophone is an open-source Python package that has been developed to ease the import of underwater sound data recorded with a hydrophone to python, so postprocessing and AI can be easily performed on the data afterwards. Different recorders can be added with their different way of reading metadata, so the users do not have to worry about the format but just about the outcome.

Benthos Ecosystem Quality Index (BEQI). BEQI is a biological index that is used to assess the state of the benthos of coastal and transitional waters for the Water Framework Directive. Taking into consideration the large intrinsic variability of estuarine and coastal systems and the importance of ecosystem functioning within a water body, Ysebaert & Herman (2003) advocate a multilevel scale-dependent approach for the classification of the quality elements in coastal and transitional waters. The proposed multilevel approach consists of three levels: (1) level 1 - Ecosystem level; (2) level 2 - Habitat level; (3) level 3 - Community (within habitat) level. Where suitable input and reference data is provided, the tool will calculate Ecosystem quality scores and produce a list of species that are responsible for observed deviations from the reference state.

The goal of MarineSPEED is to provide a benchmark data set for presence-only species distribution modeling (SDM) in order to facilitate reproducible and comparable SDM research. It contains species occurrences (coordinates) from a wide diversity of marine species and associated environmental data from Bio-ORACLE and MARSPEC. Some additional information about MarineSPEED can be found in the R Shiny viewer at https://rshiny.lifewatch.be/marinespeed/.

A tool for Quality Controlling Darwin Core based datasets according to the EMODnet Biology guidelines. The tool performs a thorough QC on OBIS-env datasets and occurrence core datasets. It can use an IPT resource URL as input. Quality controlling a dataset is fundamental in order to ensure its appropriate usage. The EMODnetBiocheck R package is developed in the framework of the LifeWatch and EMODnet Biology projects, and managed by the EurOBIS (European Ocean Biodiversity Information System) Data Management Team at the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ). It helps users to Quality Control their (marine) biological datasets by performing a varied number of quality checks on both published and unpublished datasets. This R package also allows a thorough visual exploration of the dataset, while highlighting potential issues within the dataset. The R package can be used on: i) public IPT resources; ii) loaded data tables. The only requirement to use the R package is the existence of an Occurrence table in the dataset, although the analysis reaches its full potential using an IPT resource with OBIS-ENV data format (Core: "Event"; Extensions: "Occurrence" and "Extended Measurements or Facts").

One of the virtual laboratories developed by LifeWatch Belgium is the Belgian LifeWatch eLab. This online application allows users to standardise, analyse and visualise their data, making use of web services built on top of internal and external reference databases. The ultimate goal of LifeWatch is to set up a network for data exchange and data analysis through web services. Web services are systems that allow communication between two computers over the web, and allow the user to access the most recent and up-to-date information directly from within other applications. Within LifeWatch Belgium, several web services are available to standardise, analyse and visualise your data, and to extract additional data from several sources. The user can select several data services (taxonomic, geographic, thematic, etc.) and run them successively through a straightforward online user interface. You can also use the LifeWatch.be web services in a concatenated way, i.e. the output of one web service is the input for the next web service. Establishing such workflows helps solving (complicated) biological questions. Several use cases demonstrate the use of the LifeWatch web services. So as to facilitate the use of the LifeWatch web services, several applications and tools were documented in use cases and tutorials. These can be found on the links below, as well as on the specific websites of software packages and Github repositories. The Belgian LifeWatch E-Lab online application allows users to standardize, analyze and visualize their data, making use of web services built on top of internal and external reference databases. A user can select several data services (taxonomic, geographic, thematic, etc.) and run them successively through a straightforward user interface. As explained in the user guide, the LifeWatch.be web services can be used in a concatenated way, i.e. the output of one web service is the input for the next web service.

Acoustic monitoring is a powerful technique for learning about the ecology of bats. Bat recorders provide continuous registration of bat activity by recording echolocation calls of passing bats. Since the bat calls are highly reliable taxonomic features, the acquired data can be used to estimate diversity and relative abundance of the occurring species. The generated data provides a basis for ecological and behavioral research of the bat species occurring in our coastal and marine areas. BatSounds is an open source repository that contains scripts to work with BatCorder data and BatCorder devices. The repository contains two scripts that are useful to process and send the audio data retrieved by ecoObs Batcorders (https://ecoobs.com/): - Raw_to_wav is a python script that adds a header to raw audio files from the BatCorder so it can more easily be used by different softwares as a wav file. - beaglebone_batcorder is a bash-script to run on a Beaglebone Black minicomputer connected to a BatCorder. It copies the data from the BatCorder daily to its own SD card and sends it to an FTP server over Ethernet. It allows for remote data transfer and memory management of the BatCorder. LifeWatch Belgium has currently four ecoObs BatCorders installed. You can find more information here: https://lifewatch.be/en/sensor-network-bat-detection