Allows owners of biodiversity data to make their data available in a very controlled way.

Once data are loaded on to the Gateway the owner of the data has control over exactly who can see the data and what they can do. The owner can decide to only allow a few selected named individuals to view the ten kilometre squares where the records occur or to allow everyone to download the whole dataset, or indeed any range of options between these.

Provides functionality for displaying and using the data.

The web site itself does provide some basic functionality including:

• mapping the distribution of species (nationally or locally)
• providing summaries of the records available for a geographical area (either known sites like SSSIs or user defined ones)
• interactive mapping to allow the user to interrogate individual records
• a range of data download options
  

Provides links to contextual information on other web sites.

There is now a lot of biodiversity information available on the various sites on the internet. One of the functions of the Gateway is to provide a signpost to these sites which could include, for example, textual descriptions or images of a species or site.

Helps improve the functionality of other sites.

The Gateway also has a range of options for improving the functionality of other sites. Many of the tools have been designed to be called from remote sites or other applications that allow the maps or data to be seamlessly integrated into them.