Welcome

MarineAtlas.be is a joint initiative of several Belgian federal administrations that generate, collect and maintain geo–referenced information related to the sea.

Currently the marine atlas gives access to the geographical information contained in the Belgian marine spatial plans established by the royal decrees in 2014 and 2019. This content will be continuously enriched with information corresponding to the various themes defined in the EU Directive “INSPIRE”: Environmental monitoring, Energy resources and energy production, Geology… to name a few.

The information is published in different formats, in order to promote the re-use of the data. The human user is able to easily browse the available datasets, (pre-)view them and download the selected information. Corresponding functions, offered as "web-services" allow incorporating the available information into complex and distributed applications.

MarineAtlas.be aims at becoming the marine node of the federal geo-platform being implemented by the Belgian National Geographical Institute. Once this node and the infrastructure will be available, it will be much more easy for the Belgian federal administration to comply with the implementation of the INSPIRE directive and the international obligations that, already now, request the INSPIRE-compliancy, e.g. Marine Strategy Framework Directive, Marine Spatial Planning directive, EIOnet reporting, ...

A follow-up committee made up of representatives of concerned federal departments supports the project on a voluntary and informal basis.