The NBN Atlas is a collaborative project bringing together biological and ecosystem data collected by individuals and organisations throughout the British Isles and makes them freely available online for use and analysis. The NBN Atlas helps improve biodiversity knowledge, opens up research possibilities, and changes the way environmental management is carried out. For the first time ever species data, collected by volunteers and professionals have come fully to life, enriched with photographs, habitat data and other environmental layers. Information will be used to make informed planning and environmental decisions at national and local level.

o The NBN will be co-ordinating the development of the infrastructure in partnership with funders, NGO’s, conservation charities, academic institutions and citizen scientists. o The NBN Atlas has demonstrated the power and functionality of this infrastructure for supporting biological recorders, researchers, policy and decision makers. The NBN Atlas is very intuitive and easy to use. Furthermore, it creates outputs quickly with results and images being available instantly. o The NBN Atlas is a technological breakthrough. Already it is transforming attitudes and aspirations, and fostering creativity in the consideration of new functional applications. For example, it has attracted appreciable interest from planners at Scotland’s National Planning Forum in April 2016 and again from Scotland’s Rural Development Programme in May. NBN Atlas functionality is being examined for action recording. The NBN Atlas Monitoring Evaluation Reporting and Improvement Tool (MERIT) is designed to collect and store planning, monitoring and reporting data associated with natural resource management projects. The system aggregates project data to tell a whole-of-programme story about the impact of natural resource management investments. It may become a successor to BARS (Biodiversity Action Reporting System http://ukbars.defra.gov.uk/).

o The NBN Atlas enables environmental data to be viewed and analysed in ways never before possible. The potential for innovation is truly exciting. For conservation science and policy analysis, the NBN Atlas’ analytical capability for spatial correlation and modelling is an exciting prospect that we haven’t even explored yet.o The Atlas model has already been adopted by Spain and France. The potential for European collaboration, led by UK, is boundless.The NBN Atlas Scotland has been available for testing and limited use since May 2016.

o The NBN Atlas is all about partnership. Funding has been made available by all the partner organisations. In addition for the NBN Atlas Scotland we were supported by the European LIFE+ programme. Based on the global open source Atlas of Living Australia platform, the first element, NBN Atlas Scotland, was built by the NBN and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation of Australia (CSIRO), with support from the UK Joint Nature Conservation Committee. o Each UK country will have its own NBN Atlas and Steering Groups have been set up for them including the main funders and other NGO’s such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). In addition a UK wide NBN Atlas Steering Group will exist to oversee the project. The NGO community has vital interests both as information users and data contributors. They bring practical insights, knowledge and influence. This has been and remains a model partnership of collaboration across sectors. Across all these groups the NBN are the lead organisation.

National Biodiversity Network, Natural England, Natural Resources for Wales, Welsh Government, Northern Ireland Environment Agency, Scottish Natural Heritage, Scottish Environment Protection Agency