INIS, an Information System to Support the Calculation of the Natural Capital Index (NCI) in The Netherlands

Abstract

A group of experts has calculated a Natural Capital Index (NCI) for the Netherlands, based on the size of the remaining ecosystems and their quality. An NCI was calculated for 27 nature types, using thousands measurements of about 1000 different species, which were aggregated to 2 national indexes, for the natural and agricultural area. To support this complex and extensive task, an information system INIS was build to monitor the process, standardise and speed up data processing and to allow continuous quality-control. INIS consists of a relational database with species-lists, monitoring and baseline data, ecological information on species, availability of models, policy-relevance data and sensitivity to environmental pressures. Simple scorecards can provide instant overview of the quality of the results. A simple and universally applicable framework for cal-culating future NCI’s, also in other countries is the achieved.