openModeller provides a flexible, robust, cross-platform environment to carry out ecological niche modeling experiments. It is comprised of a single framework written in C++ allowing multipe interfaces on top of it, such as command line programs, Desktop interface, Web interface and Web Service interface. The framework includes facilities for sampling points, creating, testing, evaluating and projecting models into different environmental scenarios, reading species occurrence and environmental data in different formats (including remote sources, such as GBIF and speciesLink for species occurrence data, and WCS providers for raster data), among many other features. More than 10 algorithms are available as plugins, including GARP, Maxent, ENFA and Support Vector Machines. The same functionality can be used by Python programs through a built-in SWIG binding on top of the C++ API.
The framework was originally developed by CRIA in 2003 as part of the speciesLink project with funds from FAPESP. It then became the main subject of a new 4-year thematic project funded by the same agency, which included two additional partners: Poli/USP and INPE. Being an open-source initiative, openModeller development also received important contributions from other people, projects and institutions since the very beginning, such as the University of Kansas Natural History Museum & Biodiversity Research Center (KU), the University of Reading through the BDWorld project, Incofish, GBIF and more recently from the BioVeL and EUBrazilOpenBio projects.
Use the SourceForge Bug Tracker
Muñoz, M.E.S., Giovanni, R., Siqueira, M.F., Sutton, T., Brewer, P., Pereira, R.S., Canhos, D.A.L. & Canhos, V.P. (2009) "openModeller: a generic approach to species' potential distribution modelling". GeoInformatica. DOI: 10.1007/s10707-009-0090-7
Last updated on 08 January 2015