EcoBank: A flexible database platform for sharing ecological data

Environmental crisis challenges the human race harder than ever before. Ecologists have produced a massive amount of data to cope with the crisis. Accordingly, many national scale ecological database systems have been developed worldwide to manage and analyze these datasets. However, in Korea, ecological datasets produced by different research institutes for different purposes have not been integrated or serviced due to the lack of a well-designed information infrastructure. To address this obstacle, we present EcoBank (www.nie-ecobank.kr), an open, web-based ecological database platform designed to play an important role in ecosystem analysis not only in Korea but also worldwide.

The architecture of EcoBank comprises core technologies of WebGIS, Application Programming Interface (API), responsive web, and open-source software (OSS). Huge ecological datasets from 3 different sources, including the National Institute of Ecology (NIE) in Korea, related domestic and international platforms and repositories, pass through the three conceptual modules in EcoBank: data management, analysis, and service. Diverse potential stakeholders of EcoBank can be classified into three groups: researchers, policymakers, and public users. EcoBank aims to expand its horizons through mutual communication between these stakeholders. We opened and launched EcoBank service from December 2019, and now began to broaden its network by linking to other data platforms and repositories over the globe to find possible solutions to ecological issues in Korea.