Atlas of Living Australia

What Atlas of Living Australia does

Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) is Australia's national biodiversity data infrastructure, aggregating over 101,540,359 occurrence records across 9,757 datasets sourced from museums, herbaria, government departments, individual collectors, and community groups. Operating as the official Australian node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), the platform provides researchers, government agencies, environmental managers, and citizen scientists with a unified entry point into Australia's biodiversity data corpus and a suite of analytical tools for searching, mapping, and sharing species information.

Name

Atlas of Living Australia

Legal name

Atlas of Living Australia (project represented by Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation - CSIRO)

Website

https://ala.org.au

Company type

Private

Founded year

2006

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) is a CSIRO-hosted, NCRIS-funded national biodiversity infrastructure providing open access to over 101 million occurrence records across 9,757 datasets, serving Australian researchers, government agencies, environmental managers, and citizen scientists.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Biodiversity Data Platform

NAICS

Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (5192), Surveying and Mapping (except Geophysical) Services (541370), Administration of Conservation Programs (924120), Libraries and Archives (51921)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)

akta.pro primary industry

Environmental Data Management Platforms (EHS/EMS, LIMS, ELN, Compliance Data Hubs) (EUAHAKAA)

akta.pro secondary industries

Ecological/Habitat & Land-Use Change Modeling (Biodiversity, Conservation Planning) (EUAHAKAI), Nature & Biodiversity Reporting (TNFD, natural capital) (EUAHAJAM), Environmental Data Integration, ETL & Interoperability (APIs, Standards, Data Pipelines) (EUAHAKAB), Environmental Data QA/QC, Validation & Governance (Data Quality, Metadata, Lineage) (EUAHAKAK), Terrestrial Ecology & Habitat Surveys (EUAHAHAA)

Keywords

• Biodiversity data platform
• Species occurrence records
• Citizen science tools
• Ecological data analysis
• Biological collections access

Headquarters

HQ city

Canberra

HQ country

Australia

HQ region

Oceania

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Operations

Revenue model

1. Government Research Infrastructure Funding: The ALA is supported by NCRIS (National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy) funding from the Australian Government Department of Education. This provides core operational funding for the platform as a national research infrastructure facility.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) operates a free, open-access national biodiversity data platform for Australia, aggregating more than 101 million species occurrence records and 9,757 datasets from museums, herbaria, government agencies, and community contributors. It provides tools and services for searching, mapping, downloading, and analysing biodiversity data, along with dedicated portals for researchers, government/land managers, and the general community. The platform also exposes its data programmatically through APIs and R/Python packages (e.g. galah) and supports citizen science through projects such as BioCollect and DigiVol.

Product overview

Atlas of Living Australia operates as a unified platform-plus-modules architecture centered on the ALA Platform (ala.org.au), which serves as the primary interface for exploring 101+ million biodiversity occurrence records and 9,757 datasets. The core platform is augmented by specialized tools including the Spatial Portal for mapping and spatial analysis, BioCollect for citizen science and ecological survey data collection, galah for programmatic R/Python data access, and DigiVol for volunteer digitization of museum collections. Sector-specific modules include MERIT for environmental field management, the Biosecurity Hub for government agencies, and community hubs such as AVH (herbarium data), OZCAM (zoological collections), and ARGA (genome data). The platform integrates with iNaturalistAU for citizen science sightings and provides mobile apps for field data collection.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• BioCollect: A data collection and management tool developed by ALA that supports scientists, ecologists, citizen scientists and natural resource managers in collecting and managing biodiversity, ecological and natural resource management (NRM) data.
• DigiVol
• Spatial Portal
• galah
• ALA Labs

Products and services

• Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) Platform Core open-access platform aggregating species occurrence records, datasets, and biodiversity information for Australian researchers, government, and the community.
• BioCollect Online citizen science project management tool that allows organisations and community groups to set up biodiversity survey projects, collect field data, and manage volunteer contributions.
• Spatial Portal Interactive web-based mapping and analysis environment for visualising, interrogating, and downloading species occurrence data with environmental layers.
• galah (R/Python package) Programmatic interface (R and Python libraries) that enables users to query, filter, and download biodiversity occurrence records directly from the ALA for reproducible scientific workflows.
• DigiVol Online volunteer platform for digitising biodiversity records from museum specimens, labels, and field notebooks, supporting transcription of historical natural history collections.
• Australian Virtual Herbarium (AVH) Specialised portal providing access to herbarium specimen records from Australian herbaria, integrated within the ALA platform.
• OZCAM (Online Zoological Collections of Australian Museums) Specialised hub within the ALA providing access to zoological specimen records held by Australian museums.
• iNaturalistAU Australian node of the global iNaturalist citizen science network, integrated with the ALA for community-contributed biodiversity observations.

Quantifiable outcome

• Over 101 million occurrence records accessible for research and analysis
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers3 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration6 records

AI capability2 records

Feature6 records

Partnerships

Ten partnerships are on record, tiered core and major.

• NCRIS (National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy)coreOthersThe ALA is supported by NCRIS funding from the Australian Government Department of Education. NCRIS provides national research infrastructure funding that enables the operation and maintenance of the Atlas platform as critical scientific infrastructure for Australia's research community.
• CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCSIRO hosts the Atlas of Living Australia project. In the context of the Terms of Use agreement, CSIRO is the legal entity representing and responsible for the Atlas project. CSIRO provides institutional backing and research expertise.
• GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerThe ALA is the Australian node of GBIF, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. This international partnership enables global biodiversity data sharing and positions the ALA within the worldwide network of living atlases.
• TERN (Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network)majorTechnology or IntegrationIntegration partnership enabling ALA data to be used alongside TERN facilities. The ALA can integrate data with other national research infrastructure facilities for ecoscience research.
• BCCVL (Biodiversity and Climate Change Virtual Laboratory)majorTechnology or IntegrationIntegration partnership enabling ALA biodiversity data to be used within climate change research and analysis workflows through the BCCVL platform.
• EcoCloud (Cloud Computing for Ecoscience)majorTechnology or IntegrationALA provides reference to EcoCloud for cloud computing services for ecoscience, enabling researchers to perform large-scale biodiversity analysis using cloud resources.
• ANDS (Australian National Data Service)majorTechnology or IntegrationIntegration partnership for research data management and discovery. The ALA integrates with ANDS to support data citation and research data infrastructure.
• iNaturalistmajorTechnology or IntegrationIntegration with iNaturalist for species identification support. iNaturalist observations can appear in the ALA, enabling broader citizen science data contribution. The ALA Record a Sighting feature integrates with iNaturalistAU.
• AVH (Australasian Virtual Herbarium)majorTechnology or IntegrationALA provides access to the Australasian Virtual Herbarium, a community-driven data hub providing filtered access to herbarium specimen data from Australian institutions.
• OZCAM (Online Zoological Collections of Australian Museums)majorTechnology or IntegrationALA provides access to OZCAM, the Online Zoological Collections of Australian Museums, enabling access to zoological specimen data through the ALA platform.

Scale indicators4 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility): The international network of which ALA is the Australian node; GBIF aggregates occurrence records from national nodes worldwide and shares ALA's open-data mission, technology stacks (Living Atlases) and target audience of researchers and policymakers.
• iNaturalist: Citizen-science species observation platform with AI-assisted identification; directly overlaps with ALA's Record-a-Sighting/BioCollect citizen-science functions and is integrated with ALA via iNaturalistAU, competing for contributor attention.
• OBIS (Ocean Biodiversity Information System): Global marine biodiversity occurrence database under IOC/UNESCO; targets the same researcher/government decision-making audience as ALA but for marine species, and is similarly integrated with GBIF infrastructure.
• eBird (Cornell Lab of Ornithology): Global bird occurrence database operated by the Cornell Lab; shares ALA's species occurrence aggregation model, open-access ethos, and researcher/government/utility, though focused on birds rather than whole fauna/flora.
• Canadensys: Canadian national biodiversity data hub also built on the GBIF/Living Atlases stack; directly comparable in scope (national occurrence aggregator), tooling and target users, but focused on Canadian taxa.
• Movebank: Wildlife tracking data platform for animal movement and sensor data; mirrors ALA's ZoaTrack sub-product in scope and serves a closely overlapping research/management user base in animal ecology.
• NBN Atlas (UK): UK national biodiversity network atlas built on the same Living Atlases open-source stack as ALA; offers directly comparable occurrence search, spatial tools, and citizen science features for a different geography.
• Plazi: Open biodiversity data infrastructure provider focused on literature-derived taxonomic occurrence data; competes with ALA's DigiVol transcription-to-occurrence workflow and shares GBIF integration.
• VertNet: Open-access vertebrate specimen occurrence database hosted by natural history collections; directly comparable dataset category (museum specimen occurrences), open-data licensing, and research audience.

Broad incumbents

• DataONE (Data Observation Network for Earth): NSF-funded environmental and ecological data infrastructure federation; broader in scope than ALA but enables similar data discovery, citation and preservation for biodiversity/ecosystem datasets and serves an overlapping research community.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/AtlasOfLivingAustralia
• Facebookfacebook.com/atlasoflivingaustralia
• Xx.com/atlaslivingaust
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/atlas-of-living-australia

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about Atlas of Living Australia