2. JRC Participation in the EU Datathon 2019
Grégoire DUBOIS
Unit D6
European Commission Joint Research Centre

3. What is the dataset about?
The dataset has been extracted from the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA), a global reference information system focusing on protected areas (see )
The DOPA provides a broad range of environmental and socio- economic indicators at country, ecoregion and site level (protected areas) to facilitate comparison and prioritization
All protected areas ≥ 25 km2 (around 30,000) are documented in terms of biodiversity and pressures they are exposed to

4. What is the context in which it was developed?
The DOPA is developed mainly to support the services of the European Commission as well as of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to
assess the current status of the world regarding conservation efforts;
identify at country and ecoregion levels the protected areas that are exposed to highest pressures and have highest biodiversity for setting conservation priorities.

5. What is the structure of the dataset?
Among others, DOPA provides information on the number of threatened species, land cover and land cover change, land use, population, land degradation, climate, connectivity, etc. at country, ecoregion and protected area level.

6. What is the structure of the dataset?
The data are available in a single Excel workbook with 5 worksheets
Description of the dataset
Country data
Ecoregion data
Protected area data
List of data sources

7. Important to know
All indicators have been processed automatically. Only limited quality check on output data is possible (rubbish in = rubbish out)
There are no restrictions to the use of the country and ecoregion data. Only data on protected areas can not be used for commercial purposes, see conditions of use at and-conditions
The designations employed do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the European Commission concerning the borders and legal status of any country, territory, area or its authorities

8. Current applications
DOPA data are also available via the DOPA Explorer 3.0, a web based GIS allowing end-users to explore the biodiversity and pressure data at country, ecoregion and site level.
The application is available from

9. Envisaged applications
Some of the DOPA data can be also accessed by REST services for third party developers to embed these data in their own applications:
See
Possible new developments would be to link these data with other environmental applications and/or to analyse the correlations between the multiple indicators made available at the site level. See for example
Bastin, L., Gorelick, N., Saura, S., Bertzky, B., Dubois, G., Fortin, M.J, Pekel, J.F. (2019). Inland surface waters in protected areas globally: Current coverage and 30-year trends. Plos ONE 14(1): e

10. JRC Participation in the EU Datathon 2019
Grégoire DUBOIS
JRC D6
European Commission Joint Research Centre