FOSS4G 2022 general tracks

The Freshwater Biodiversity Information System (FBIS) – mobilising data for monitoring freshwater ecosystems
2022-08-26, 10:00–10:05 (Europe/Rome), Modulo 0

Access to long-term biodiversity datasets is vital for monitoring, managing, and protecting freshwater ecosystems. Detecting critical ecosystem changes, such as losing unique biodiversity and ecosystem services, is dependent on access to data. A wealth of biodiversity data exists for river ecosystems in South Africa, but an operational information system to access these data is currently not available. To address this knowledge gap, the Freshwater Biodiversity Information System (FBIS) has been developed. FBIS is a platform for hosting, visualizing, and sharing freshwater biodiversity information for South African rivers. The project seeks to mobilize and import to the system baseline biodiversity data, identify strategic long-term monitoring sites, and train key organizations on how to use the information system. Using map-based visualizations, user-friendly dashboards and rapid data extraction capabilities, the system will improve knowledge of freshwater biodiversity and long-term river health trends, thereby supporting better-informed river management decisions and conservation planning projects.

Dimas is an exceptionally well organised and productive software developer with deep coding skills and problem solving abilities
who strives for the highest levels of perfection and quality in his work. He is a graduate in Informatics Engineering, holding dual
Bachelors degrees in this field. He has been working working in a production environment since 2013, building mobile (both iOS and
Android) and web applications. He loves building beautiful and functional user-facing applications and is equally happy to dive into
the technical details of an application backend. He has been an active contributor to various Open Source projects since 2015. Dimas
is a passionate gamer - he built several mobile games and also won a number of ‘hackathons’ with game concepts he developed
during his student days.