geo.be Metadata Catalog
geo.be Metadata Catalog (National Geographic Institute)
https://publish.geo.be:/geonetwork/srv/eng/thesaurus.download?ref=external.theme.httpinspireeceuropaeumetadatacodelistSpatialScope-SpatialScope (2)
Continents, countries, sea regions of the world.
Download Service (WFS) for Automatic weather station (AWS) observations
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.
Download Service (WCS) for Alaro over Belgium
Download Service (WCS) for Alaro over Belgium. All the parameters of the last run of Alaro can be downloaded in grid format
Air quality monitoring network of Belgium
The air quality monitoring networks in Belgium are used for the assessment of air quality under the air quality directives (2008/50/EC & 2004/107/EC).
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. The assessment methods are used to provide information for the assessment of air quality in Belgium towards the Commission. Member States shall make the information referred to in paragraph 1 available to the Commission for a full calendar year no later than 9 months after the end of each calendar year.
Buyers' origin - Real estate companies corresponds to the dataset describing the origin of the buyers (legal persons engaged in real estate activities as defined in section L of the NACE-BEL 2008 nomenclature) of real estate located in Belgium according to the municipality of their headquarters for legal persons settled in Belgium and according to the country or territory of their headquarters for foreign legal persons (headquarter at the date of the deed). This dataset is made up of seven classes. The first class shows, at national level, for each type of property, the total number of parcels, the number of parcels acquired by buyers from each Belgian municipality and the number of parcels acquired by buyers from each country or territory. The number of parcels takes into account the shares actually acquired. The second class shows this information at the level of the three regions. The following classes do the same at the level of provinces, arrondissements, municipalities, land register divisions and statistical sectors. The dataset is freely downloadable, in the form of zipped CSV files.
The licence is fully available in French (https://finances.belgium.be/sites/default/files/Licence_plan_opendata_FR.PDF) or in Dutch (https://financien.belgium.be/sites/default/files/Licentie_plan_opendata_NL.PDF).
Buyers' origin - Real estate companies is compiled from the contents of the reference database for the record of real estate deeds. The database records for each deed, the real right concerned, the identification of the parties and the situation of the real estate property concerned as well as its land register nature. The second database contains various items of information for each legal person from the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises, the authentic source for legal persons.
The hillshades are presented as a regular homogeneous grid of points indicating the grey level value resulting from their orientation with respect to the chosen fictitious light source. The 1m hillshade is the view obtained by hillshading of the 1m DTM. The 5m and 20m hillshades are the views obtained by hillshading of the 5m and 20m DTM.
The 'Hillshade' product is a hillshading view of DTMs at different resolutions. The source data used for the production of this 'Shading' product are the DTMs at 1m, 5m or 20m resolution. To create this view, we used the following parameters: - Azimuth: 315° (angle of the fictitious light source to North) - Altitude: 45° (angle of the dummy light source above the horizon) Hillshading views allow for the creation of a graphic shading effect that gives an idea of the terrain relief on the map representations.
Belgian surface rainfall rate and accumulation estimation (QPE)
RADQPE provides high resolution radar-based quantitative precipitation estimation in realtime for Belgium and its surroundings. This product is not publically available yet.
The RADQPE product is obtained after a careful processing of the weather radar measurements and a merging with rain gauge measurements. The scientific basis can be found in Goudenhoofdt and Delobbe (2016). There is a continuous improvement process based on research and quality control. WEATHER RADAR MEASUREMENTS Radars emit electromagnetic pulses, typically with a length of 500m and a width of 1 degree. Part of the energy of this pulse is reflected back to the radar by precipitation. Radars performs scans at different elevations in about 5 minutes. Estimating rainfall from radar measurements is a challenge because of the many sources of error and uncertainty. RADQPE is based on the 3D reflectivity measurements of the following radars: - Avesnois, France, French National Meteorological Service - Helchteren, Belgium, Flanders Environment Agency - Jabbeke, Belgium, The Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium - Neuheilenbach, Germany, German National Meteorological Service - Wideumont, Belgium, The Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium These radars exhibit various technology, scanning strategy and data processing. They use Doppler capabilities to remove non-meteorological echoes with zero velocity (e.g. hills). Some processing can lead to loss of information and make further processing difficult. RAIN GAUGE MEASUREMENTS The following automatic rain gauge networks are used by RADQPE: - 91 weighted gauge OTT2, SPWMI, Belgium - 42 weighted gauge OTT2, VMM, Belgium - 19 weighted gauge OTT2, WL, Belgium The quality control by data providers is void (WL), limited (SPW) or unknown (VMM). No extra quality control is performed before writing the data in the RMIB database. QUALITY CONTROL OF THE RADAR MEASUREMENTS - Identification of permanently contaminated measurements (hills, wind farms, interference). - Correction for radar beam blockage by terrain - Identification of clutter (i.e. non-meteorological echoes or signals) based on satellite cloudiness products - Identification of clutter based on vertical profiles of radar reflectivity - Identification of clutter based on image texture - Identification of clutter based on dual-polarisation technology (only Helchteren and Jabekke) FROM RADAR MEASUREMENTS TO GROUND RAINFALL RATE ESTIMATION 1. Identification of convective precipitation 2. Extrapolation to ground of non convective precipitation using an averaged vertical profile of reflectivity 3. Interpolation of missing data (vertically then horizontally) 4. Conversion of reflectivity into rain rates based on precipitation type (hail, convective, stratiform) SINGLE RADAR ACCUMULATION AND BIAS CORRECTION 1. The movement of precipitation between 5-min snapshots is obtained using optical flow methods. It is used to accumulate rain rates over the past 1 hour and 24 hours. 2. The accumulations are adjusted by a mean field bias (MFB), which is computed based on the rain gauges measurements corresponding to the same duration 3. To remove radar calibration difference before compositing, the single radar rain rates are adjusted by the median of the 24h biases (computed at the previous step) for the past month. COMPOSITING, ACCUMULATION AND RADAR-GAUGE MERGING 1. For the months with dominant convective precipitation (May, June, July, August), the single radar rain rates are combined into a composite by taking the maximum value of the 3 closest radars. 2. For other months, the composite is based on all values weighted based on the distance to the radar. 3. Rainfall accumulation of the composite rain rates are made for the past 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 1 hour and 24 hours. 4. The 1h and 24h composite accumulations are adjusted by the MFB correction 5. The 1h bias correction of the previous step is applied to the composite rain rate. The correction is also applied to the 5 and 10-min composite accumulations
INSPIRE download service for general marine datasets-WFS
INSPIRE compliant download service for geographic information of general marine datasets made available by the Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences (RBINS). More specific products such as the Marine Spatial Plan and the MSFD data are provided by other WMS services.
Area management/restriction/regulation zones and reporting units
INSPIRE download service (WFS) - CORINE Land Cover-2018-Belgium
This web service allows downloading datasets from CORINE Land Cover-2018-Belgium, compliant with the INSPIRE data specifications
Occupation and planning of sea and land areas
•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.
Geodetic markers of which the 3D coordinates are precisely known in common Belgian reference systems.
The geodetic markers of the 3D network are placed and measured since 2018. The completion of this network is planned in 2024. The combination of measurements using GNSS and precise leveling allow to determine accurate ETRS89 and Lambert2008 coordinates, complemented by ellipsoidal and orthometric elevations.
National wastewater-based epidemiological surveillance of SARS-CoV-2
The national wastewater-based epidemiological surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 monitors the SARS-CoV-2 presence in several wastewater treatment plants across Belgium. This dataset contains the results per treatment plant since the beginning of the surveillance in September 2020. The results consist of the SARS-CoV-2 concentrations over time as well as other data needed for the interpretations such as the flow rates of the treatment plants and the population covered.
Wastewater, Epidemiological surveillance, Epidemiology, Infectious diseases, SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, Coronavirus
Environmental Health Determinant Measure
The surveillance started in mid-September 2020 for the whole country. Samples are collected every week at each selected wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) using 24-hour volume proportional or time proportional auto-samplers. Samples are stored at 4°C and analyzed within 24 hours. The samples from Wallonia were analyzed by E-BIOM until December 2023, after which the Foodborne Pathogens Unit of Sciensano took over the analyses. Samples from the Brussels-Capital Region and the provinces of West-Vlanderen, Oost-Vlanderen and Vlaams-Brabant are analyzed by the Foodborne pathogens unit of Sciensano while samples from the provinces of Antwerpen and Limburg are analyzed by the Microbiology, Parasitology and Hygiene Laboratory of the University of Antwerp. The three laboratories use a harmonized protocol. After concentration and RNA extraction, the samples were analyzed by RT-qPCR until June 2023 and later on by RT-dPCR. Three target sequences located in two regions of SARS-Cov-2 genome are analyzed. The gene fragments are the N1 and N2 sequences targeting the N gene encoding for the nucleoprotein, and the E gene encoding for the viral envelope protein. Since June 2023 only N2 and E sequences are analyzed. Until June 2023, analyses were performed in duplicates for the three genes (in triplicates until mid-September 2022 in Wallonia, then in duplicates) but since June 2023, each analysis is conducted only once. The quality of the results is checked and validated at the laboratory level. If the quality is insufficient, additional analyzes are performed. Once received by the data manager, the laboratory results undergo a second validation before being integrated in the database. The 24 hours-representative flow rates of each WWTP are collected using flowmeters and are provided by the wastewater agencies (Hydria and Aquiris for the WWTPs of Brussels, Société Publique de Gestion de l'Eau (SPGE) for the WWTPs of Wallonia and Aquafin for the WWTPs of Flanders). Domestic inhabitant equivalents (IE) are used to estimate the population coverage of each WWTP. IE are based on several data sources (population data, building type data, connection to the network and WWTPs geographical coverage data). IE are provided by SPGE in Wallonia and by the Vlaamse Milieumaatschappij (VMM) in Flanders. In Brussels the population is estimated based on the data provided by Statbel. The data provided by the wastewater agencies and VMM are validated by the data manager before being integrated in the database.
Monitoring stations (Air Quality Directive)
Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium
Belgian Interregional Environment Agency (IRCEL - CELINE)
FPS Finance - General Administration of Patrimonial Documentation (GAPD)
Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences, Directorate Natural Environment, GeoCell