The Belgian Region of Wallonia has revised its geoportal to increase its reach by enhancing its user experience and providing better access to data.

Launched in 2013, geoportail.wallonie.be aims at centralising the region’s geographic data to promote their re-use, help contributors and eventually build a local community around graphic data, Digital Wallonia, in charge of the digital strategy of Wallonia, stated on its website. The portal is managed by the public administration of Wallonia.

This version of the portal offers now a tool called WalOnMap, which allows citizens to use data on an interactive map and create their own geographic view. Local public institutions and administrations can publish data. Users can zoom in and out, search for addresses and apply classic or satellite view and draw their own route. Data, including land registry, Natura 2000 zones or flood zones, can also been visualised.

Interactive maps

The portal also provides a list of pre-built interactive maps, showing a hydrogeological study of the region or a geological map.

All stakeholders in the geographic sector can also be indexed in a dedicated repository to create a kind of “who’s who”. Application developers, data producers, experts (like forest officers for example), software vendors or content manager are listed. Data can be downloaded, uploaded and enriched to build new datasets. Geoportail.wallonie.be has also been developed to be an exchange portal for the global community. Events and meetings are listed in an agenda.