WFS: documentation and accessibility

[damianooldoni]

Hi @niconoe 👋
I had a meeting with @fjasteen today and indeed, field managers from De Vlaamse Weg are also very interested to download the data, e.g. for visualizing them on other layers in their QGIS applications. @fjasteen and I agree that we should offer the WFS as mentioned in riparias/gbif-alert#271. And we think offering ALL the data would be sufficient.

I couldn't find anything on the website about the WFS. By doing some "text scaping" in the issues, I found this WFS: https://alert.riparias.be/api/wfs/observations.

• Is it the correct one?
• Although implemented based on a request of POV (Province East Flanders), I suppose that it can be used by other users as well, right?

I think we need a little documentation on the webpage Over the data so that people have both ways to access the data on the same page, both documented: WFS and direct download from GBIF.

What do you think, @niconoe? Does is make sense?

[niconoe]

Hi Damiano,

Basically: yes to all!

• https://alert.riparias.be/api/wfs/observations is indeed a WFS endpoint serving all observations, it's not properly documented yet but is good to use by @fjasteen or others, if they have the need for it.
• indeed, it would be good to document it (there are other, non-WFS API that should be properly documented - I think a new page would be good for this!)
• we can also implement the per-alert WFS (option to download data for a specific alert setting gbif-alert#271)! Just for clarification / prioritization: would that be useful to @fjasteen too? (in addition to the other users mentioned by Tim in #271).

Thanks!

[damianooldoni]

Thanks @niconoe for your clear answer.

I am happy to hear that the WFS is publicly available as I expected 🥳

I would classify the per-alert WFS as a nice to have feature for the DVW users @fjasteen is in contact with. They mentioned that, but they were not aware that they could still get all the data. So, we think they are more happy to get all the data than to have to deal with them alert by alert. However, having a per-alert WFS can ease the data consultation in some situations and probably better for some of those users?

@fjasteen: do you plan to reach DVW users soon? It can then be good to let them know about this and so get their feedback again.