Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for RASD: The Flemish Biodiversity Portal Approach

What this was about

Dimitri Brosens described how the Flemish Biodiversity Portal, an adaptation of the Atlas of Living Australia's Living Atlas software, gives different users different views of the same data. Access is not managed by the two-person portal team: users log in through the Flemish government's access-management gateway, and each institution decides which of its employees get the 'high resolution' role. He compared the portal as seen by an anonymous citizen (1 km gridded data) and by a user with high-resolution rights (exact locations), and showed that the flags are carried in dataset dynamic properties. Only the first five minutes or so of the talk were recorded because of the sound failure.

Why it matters. Shows a lightweight way for a small regional portal to serve both open and restricted data by delegating identity and role management to an existing government authentication service.

In the room

• The Flemish Living Atlas (adapted from the ALA Living Atlas) holds about 38 million occurrences, information on about 27,000 species, about 320 occurrence datasets and about 100 species lists.
• The original driver was not sensitive species but a data provider that wanted its data shown publicly only as gridded data, which led to two versions of the data.
• Login uses the Flemish government's central access-management gateway (eID or itsme token); institutions manage access rights for their own staff, so the two-person portal team does not have to.
• Anonymous users see a generalised dataset on 1 km grid squares; users with the high-resolution role additionally see a separate high-resolution dataset with exact locations.
• Role-based access flags (for example 'RBAC allowed is high resolution') are recorded in the dataset's dynamic properties.
• Species pages likewise differ depending on the user's role.

Notable moments