The platform, known as Oppla, was launched in September 2016 by two EU-funded research projects since when it has been growing rapidly. Now sixty universities have contributed.
The new platform, which was built jointly by the EU-funded projects OPERAs and OpenNESS, is meeting with considerable interest, notably from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The UK has been acting as the coordinator for the €11 million-plus OPERAS and is also one of the participating countries in the €11.4 million-plus OPENNESS project.
To keep the service going beyond the end of both founding projects in 2017, Oppla was set up as a non-profit organisation by Countryscape and the European Centre for Nature Conservation, a biodiversity expertise centre in the Netherlands. Click here to visit the site