The National Centre for Environmental and Nature Conservation Information is a branch office of the Federal Environment Agency in Merseburg. The centre is responsible for setting up and operating the web portal umwelt.info. Our portal will develop into the primary point of contact for data and information on the environment- and nature conservation in Germany.
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About the National Centre for Environmental and Nature Conservation Information
Knowledge on the state of the environment is an important basis for sustainable development. This knowledge has to be easily accessible, freely available, valid and transparent. There are other actors besides the public sector and science that collect data on the state of nature and the environment. Nowadays, individuals, civil society or economic organisations also contribute to improve the availability of environmental knowledge. As a result, there is a very extensive, heterogeneous pool of environmentally relevant data and information. The European Commission has criticised this fragmentation of data in Germany.
Thus, the National Centre for Environmental and Nature Conservation Information was founded at the Federal Environment Agency. Our National Centre with its portal umwelt.info will make it easier to find and compare the nationwide pool of environmentally relevant data and information across all sectors and federal levels.
Picture: The branch office of the Federal Environment Agency in Merseburg / Photo: Clara Baier, Federal Environment Agency
Currently, the centre employs 17 persons in the key areas of data science, IT, governance, web development, editorial, public relations and management. It is expected to grow up to 25 persons by the end of 2025. The Structural Strengthening Act for Regional Development (Federal Law – StStG of 8th August 2020) funds the transformation of the former lignite mining regions of Central Germany and thus also our centre in Merseburg.
The National Centre for Environmental and Nature Conservation Information works on four main tasks:
1. Mapping the landscape of publicly available, environment-related data and information:
We represent the German data landscape through a curated process with data providers, such as federal or state authorities, scientific institutions and civil organisations. Catalogued data and information offers can be found using the search function of umwelt.info. Responsibility for the data and information remains with the primary sources.
2. Sharing knowledge about the environment and nature conservation:
We report on data availability for selected environmental or nature conservation aspects. Articles, interviews, fact sheets and interactive plots provide information on, for example
- topical databases, publications or projects,
- data-related environmental and nature conservation topics and
- gaps in the availability of data and information.
3. Support communication, exchange, cooperation and networking:
The umwelt.info network is based on three main columns:
- a strategic advisory board with stakeholders from science, administration and civil society;
- a community of organisations providing data and open data enthusiasts and
- a forum for users offering various information and participation formats.
We engage in dialogue and mutual exchange with various stakeholders. For example,
- student projects in the field of information retrieval based on the cooperation agreement between the Federal Environment Agency and the University of Applied Sciences in Merseburg.
- consolidating partnerships with two scientific consortia (NFDI4Earth and NFDI4Biodiversity).
- memberships in committees of the National Biodiversity Monitoring Center at the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation.
- we are a flagship project of the Federal Government's digital strategy (German) and have access to a broad network of digital projects and contacts in civil society, research and business.
4. Promoting digital sovereignty
We want to promote the provision Open Data by only highlighting publicly available knowledge on our portal. Our catalogue allows a continued usage of Germany's data and information on the environment and nature protection for humans and machines alike. The in-house, open source development of our catalogue is freely accessible and reusable on the openCode platform (Code in English). With this step, we are strengthening digital sovereignty in public administration, promoting transparency and offering the participation of the open source community.
The vision paper (German) summarises our vision and the associated goals.
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