geo.be Metadata Catalog
geo.be Metadata Catalog (National Geographic Institute)
Continents, countries, sea regions of the world.
Daily forecasts for each Belgian commune, from current day up to the next 14 days. Available parameters are : min temperature, max temperature, weather type, wind speed, wind direction, maximum hust speed, quantity of precipitation. This product is not publicly available.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) This is a human-readable summary of (and not a substitute for) the license. You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. Under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
RMI forecasters analyze all the available numeric models and choose those reflecting the situation in Belgium best. These model forecasts are then corrected by the forecasters themselves. Monthly statistics are generated to evaluate the quality of the model data and the accuracy of the corrections applied by the forecasters.
User reports from the RMI smartphone app
Since August 2019, users of the RMI smartphone app are able to send an observation of the meteorological conditions at a certain place and a certain time. The observations provide information about the weather conditions and potentially severe weather to the other users and to RMI. The collection of citizen weather reports is a valuable complement to the information obtained with the classical instruments like stations, radar and satellite. The data can be exploited for nowcasting, warnings and model verification, and eventually in assimilation. A general introduction of the data and their characteristics can be found in Reyniers et al. (2023). A basic quality control is implemented on the received observations via a plausibility check. This plausibility check determines whether an observation is plausible, suspicious or false, by comparing it to the INCA-BE nowcasting system using a simple thresholding scheme. INCA-BE is RMI's operational nowcasting system described in Reyniers et al. (2021). There is no strict spatial extent since there is no restriction at the input side: users can send observations from all over the globe. The bulk of the observations are received from within Belgium. Note that the plausibility check is not available for reports from outside Belgium.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) This is a human-readable summary of (and not a substitute for) the license. You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. Under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits. Scientific publications should refer to https://doi.org/10.5194/ecss2023-50
A basic quality control is implemented in the form of a plausibility check. Possible outcomes of this plausibility check for the validity of an observation are: 'possible', 'suspicious' or 'false'. This assessment is made immediately after the reception of the observation by comparing it to the latest INCA-BE output. There is no offline revision of this plausibility at a later time.
Belgian Lightning Location System (BELLS)
Total lightning observations, i.e., cloud-to-ground (CG) strokes and intra/inter-cloud (IC) pulses, in Belgium. BELLS data is given in Universal Time! (local time winter = UT +1; local time summer = UT + 2). Each record contains following fields: 1. Network type, 0 = LF, 1 = VHF-TOA, 2 = VHF-ITF, 3 = VLF 2. Year, 1970 to 2032. 3. Month, with January as 1 and December as 12. 4. Day of the month, 1 to 31. 5. Hour, 0 to 23. 6. Minute, 0 to 59. 7. Second, 0 to 60. 8. Nanosecond, 0 to 999999999. 9. Latitude of the calculated location in decimal degrees, to 4 decimal places, -90.0 to 90.0. 10. Longitude of the calculated location in decimal degrees, to 4 decimal places, -180.0 to 180.0. 11. Altitude in meters, -4950 to +60535. This field will be 0 if the altitude is not provided in the lightning data. 12. The altitude uncertainty in meters. This field will be 0 if the altitude uncertainty is not provided in the lightning data. 13. Estimated peak current in kiloamps, -9999 to 9999. 14. VHF Range normalized power, -9999.0 to 9999.0 15. Multiplicity for flash data (1 to 99) or 0 for strokes. 16. Cloud pulse count for the lightning record. This field will be -1 if the lightning did not contain the cloud pulse count attribute. 17. Number of sensors participating in the solution, 2 to 99. 18. Degrees of freedom when optimizing location, 0 to 99. 19. The error ellipse angle as a clockwise bearing from 0 degrees north, 0 to 180.0 degrees 20. The error ellipse semi-major axis length in kilometers, 0 to 50.0km. 21. The error ellipse semi-minor axis length in kilometers, 0 to 50.0km. 22. Chi-squared value from location optimization, 0 to 999.99 23. Rise time of the waveform in microseconds, 0 to 99.9 24. Peak-to-zero time of the waveform in microseconds, 0 to 999.9 25. Maximum rate-of-rise of the waveform in kA/usec (will be a negative rate if discharge is negative), -999.9 to 999.9 26. Cloud indicator, 1 if Cloud-to-cloud discharge, 0 for Cloud-to-ground 27. Angle indicator, 1 if sensor angle data used to compute position, 0 otherwise 28. Signal indicator, 1 if sensor signal data used to compute position, 0 otherwise 29. Timing indicator, 1 if sensor timing data used to compute position, 0 otherwise 30. Flash ID, a unique integer value identifying the flash grouping a stroke belongs to or 0 if not set. This product is not publically available yet.
BELLS is a low-frequency ground-based lightning network. The lightning sensors and central processor are based on Vaisala technology. Only lightning records that fulfill certain quality criteria, e.g., length of the semi-major axis, minimum number of sensors participating, are included.
Share of undeveloped cadastral aera - Wallonia
Share of the cadastral surface area that is not artificially developed in the cadastral and not unknown surface area to the administrative entity (region, province, district and municipality) for Wallonia
•The custodian of the resource holds the rights of property (including the rights of intellectual property) to the geographic files •The custodian grants the user the right to use the data for his internal use. •Commercial use of the data under any form is strictly forbidden •Custodian’s name must be mentioned each time the data are being used publically.
The land use and land cover data used by IWEPS for Wallonia are taken from the Belgian Cadastre (SPF Finance). A cadastral parcel includes the buildings, annexes, outbuildings, accesses and gardens that are contiguous to it, provided that the whole forms an indivisible whole and is assigned to the same use (SPF Finance, 2014). For each cadastral parcel, the surface area and the cadastral nature are available. The latter corresponds to the main use of the parcel at the time of its last cadastral registration (e.g. house, farm, business, etc.). In 2008, a land use nomenclature was developed on the basis of a joint reflection by the standing conference on territorial development, the SPW Environment and the IWEPS. The cadastral natures were grouped into 16 land use categories. These 16 categories can be grouped together to distinguish between artificial and non-artificial land. This grouping of parcels is based on the work of the European CORINE Land Cover (CLC) project in order to facilitate comparisons with other European regions. The land registry data are not exhaustive. In 2021, 5.2% of Wallonia's territory is not registered and/or of unknown nature. The unregistered areas are part of the public space (roads, squares, railways, rivers and canals, etc.). These areas of unknown nature are not homogeneously distributed over the Walloon territory. The proportion of unknown areas varies from 2% (larger or rural municipalities) to over 20% (Liège and Visé). The Sambre-et-Meuse region accounts for a large proportion of this area.
Networks of automatic lidar-ceilometer systems
The ceilometer CL51 employs a pulsed diode laser LIDAR technology, where short, powerful laser pulses are sent out in a vertical or near-vertical direction. The reflection of light (backscatter) caused by clouds, precipitation or other obscuration is analysed and used to determine the cloud base height, the cloud layer height and the amount of clouds (in octas) in different layers.
The cloud base height, the cloud layer height and the amount of clouds in different layers are computed by the Vaisala CL51 algorithm based on raw backscatter data (time resolution: 6 s and vertical resolution: 10 m). The sky condition algorithm is calculated every five minutes based on data collected during the last 30 minutes. The last 10 minutes are double-weighted to make the algorithm more responsive to variations in cloudiness. The algorithm uses cloud base height and timing information to find cloud base height close each other. These cloud base height are combined into clusters and a height value is calculated for each cluster. This height gives the base height of a cloud layer represented by the cluster. The algorithm reports layers by combining clusters whose heights are close to each other and then selecting clusters that cover the greatest amount of sky.
Network of marks whose planimetric coordinates are known with precision according to the reference systems which are used in Belgium.
Phased survey process which started in the inter-war period and ended in 2004.
The data set contains a seamless polygonal layer representing the land cover in Belgium for the year 2006 and the year 2012. The polygons are spread over 32 classes from the CORINE Land Cover legend which are present un Belgium. The minimum map unit is 25 ha. The conceptual scale is 1:100 000. The data set also contains a polygon layer showing changes of more than 5 ha in the land cover between 2006 and 2012.
The data set contains two polygonal layers: CLC2012 and CHA12_BE. The CLC2012 layer has been produced by making the intersection between the revised CORINE Land Cover 2006 layer and the layer with changes between 2006 and 2012 (CHA12_BE). The CHA12_BE layer has been produced by a visual comparison of the i2006 and i2012 images, SPOT/IRS and SPOT/IRS images respectively which cover Belgium. The topographic maps at the 1:10 000 and 1:50 000 scales and orthophotographs have been used as additional data.
The zones are used as reporting units of the air quality in Belgium. These zones are defined based on Article 3 of the 2004/107/EC Directive and Article 4 of the 2008/50/EC Directive. A zones shall mean a part of the territory of a Member State, as delimited by that Member State for the purposes of air quality assessment and management (source: 2008/50/EC).2008/50/EC Article 4: Establishment of zones and agglomerations: Member States shall establish zones and agglomerations throughout their territory. Air quality assessment and air quality management shall be carried out in all zones and agglomerations.
The dataset is created in the context of the 2008/50/EC Framework Directive. The Belgian territory is devided into zones according to the instructions listed in the 2008/50/EC Directive. Air Quality Assessment Zones are pollutant specific and only applicable for a given year. The data service supports Common Query Language (CQL).
Automatic weather station (AWS) 10-min observations
RMI operates a network of 17 automatic weather stations in Belgium. These weather stations report meteorological paramaters such as air pressure, temperature, relative humidity, precipitation (quantity,duration), wind (speed, gust, direction), sunshine duration, shortwave solar radiation and infrared radiation every 10 minutes.
The dataset of the electoral cantons represents the geographical unit used for the organization of the elections. The electoral cantons were digitised based on the definitions in the Annex of the Electoral Code, which is managed by the FPS Home Affairs. The dataset consists of a single feature type, namely the boundaries of the electoral cantons [electoralcanton]. This dataset can be downloaded via the links in 'Access' at the bottom of this page.
Administrative, statistical and cadastral units
The boundaries of the electoral cantons were digitised by the National Geographical Institute in accordance with the definition in Annex I of the Electoral Code. For this purpose, NGI used the authentic administrative data of the FPS Finance.
Management zones and agglomerations (Air Quality Directive)
Area management/restriction/regulation zones and reporting units
Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium
Walloon Institute for Evaluation, Foresight and Statistics (IWEPS)
Belgian Interregional Environment Agency (IRCEL - CELINE)