The Royal Decree of 22 May 2019 establishing a marine spatial plan defines 5 nature conservation areas: Special area for conservation 'The Flemish Banks' (Art. 7§1), Special area for conservation 'Vlakte van de Raan' (Art. 7§3), Special protection area for birds - SPA 1 (Art. 7§5.1°), Special protection area for birds - SPA 2 (Art. 7§5.2°), Special protection area for birds - SPA 3 (Art. 7§5.3°). It replaces the 2014 Marine Spatial Plan, which is included for completeness. The Royal Decree of 20 March 2014 establishing a marine spatial plan defines in its Art. 7., six nature conservation sites: two special areas for conservation (Art. 7. §1, Special area for conservation 'Vlaamse Banken' and Art. 7. §3, Special area for conservation 'Trapegeer stroombank'), three special protection zones for birds (Art7§4.1°, SBZ1, Art7§4.2°, SBZ2, Art7§4.3°, SBZ3), and one marine reserve (Art7§8, Marine reserve 'Baai van Heist'). These zones are made available digitally in the resource described by this metadata document. Please refer to the Belgian official gazette (\"Moniteur belge/Belgisch Staatsblad\") for official reference information.

Annual temperature extremes given in number of days: 1/ Total number of heatwaves occurring once in 20 years; 2/ Maximum length of the heatwaves occurring once in 20 years; 3/ Hot days: Mean annual number of days with maximum temperature > 25°C; 4/ Tropical days: Mean annual number of days with maximum temperature > 30°C; 5/ Frost days: Mean annual number of days with minimum temperature < 0°C. Heatwaves are defined according to the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium when the maximum temperature in Uccle is >= 25°C during at least 5 consecutive days, during which at least 3 days the maximum temperature is >= 30°C. The temperature extremes are available for the present target year 1975, which corresponds to the middle of the 30-year period 1961-1990.

The dataset describes the physical habitats in the Belgian Part of the North Sea. It uses the EUNIS classification system as well as the MSFD Habitat codelist for the description and classification of the BPNS. It provides also information on the energy, biozone and type of substrate for the different areas in the BPNS.

The Royal Decree of 22 May 2019 establishing a marine spatial plan defines 2 potential seaport expansion zones: Potential harbour extension Oostende (Art. 12§2), Potential harbour extension Zeebrugge (Art. 12§3). It replaces the 2014 Marine Spatial Plan, which is included for completeness. The Royal Decree of 20 March 2014 establishing a marine spatial plan defines in its Art. 9. § 10, two zones (Art. 9 §10 zone 1, Ostend, Art. 9 §10 zone 2, Zeebrugge) for the potential extension of the sea ports of Ostend en Zeebrugge. These zones are made available digitally in the resource described by this metadata document. Please refer to the Belgian official gazette (\"Moniteur belge/Belgisch Staatsblad\") for official reference information.

The Scientific Service Management Unit of the Mathematical Model of the North Sea of the Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences has been operating monitoring stations on the Belgian Part of the North Sea since the 1970s. These stations are located in the Scheldt estuary, at open sea and in coastal waters. In 2007, 10 new stations were designated and were placed in the monitoring network needed for the OSPAR convention, the Water Framework Directive and the Marine Strategic Framework Directive. These replaced a series of 54 previous monitoring stations whose data was gathered throughout the years for the Belgian Monitoring Programme and reported according to the recommendations of the OSPAR Convention. This dataset contains information on all monitoring stations ever used by the Scientific Service Management Unit of the Mathematical Model of the North Sea. The dataset provides location, name, operational history and for which reporting obligations they are used.

This dataset contains the orthophotos of the floodable areas along the Meuse, the Vesdre and the Demer. These orthophotos are digital aerial photographs, taken by Hansa Luftbild following the floods of July 2021, in which the systematic distortions due to the central projection, relief and the not always perfectly vertical axis of shooting have been corrected. The orthophoto thereby obtained is metrically more accurate than an ordinary aerial photograph and is highly valuable as basic information. The resolution of the data is 6.5 cm (4 cm above the Hoëgne).

Annual temperature extremes given in number of days: 1/ Total number of heatwaves occurring once in 20 years; 2/ Maximum length of the heatwaves occurring once in 20 years; 3/ Hot days: Mean annual number of days with maximum temperature > 25°C; 4/ Tropical days: Mean annual number of days with maximum temperature > 30°C; 5/ Frost days: Mean annual number of days with minimum temperature < 0°C. Heatwaves are defined according to the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium when the maximum temperature in Uccle is >= 25°C during at least 5 consecutive days, during which at least 3 days the maximum temperature is >= 30°C. The temperature extremes are available for the future target year 2085, which corresponds to the middle of the 30-year period 2071-2100, and for mean and high impact scenarios corresponding respectively to the 50th and 95th percentiles of the change factors.

Summer and winter mean relative humidity given in %. The relative humidity fields are available for the present target year 1975, which corresponds to the middle of the 30-year period 1961-1990.

Summer and winter mean relative humidity given in %. The relative humidity fields are available for the future target year 2085, which corresponds to the middle of the 30-year period 2071-2100, and for mean and high impact scenarios corresponding respectively to the 50th and 5th percentiles of the change factors.

Summer and winter maximum daily precipitation given in mm/day that occur once in a year and once in 5, 10, 15 and 30 years (i.e. return periods of 1 year and 5, 10, 15, 30 years). The precipitation extremes are available for the future target year 2085, which corresponds to the middle of the 30-year period 2071-2100, and for mean and high impact scenarios corresponding respectively to the 50th and 95th percentiles of the change factors.