Web portal for management of bioindication methods and ecotoxicological tests in ecological risk assessment

The objective of this article is to inform about efforts to design and implement a data model that can parametrically describe and store information about a wide range of ecotoxicological tests and bioindication methods used in Ecological Risk Assessment (EcoRA). At the same time it describes comprehensive web-based portal built on this model that can be used to quickly find relevant biological assays (ecotoxicological biotests) for given situation and therefore support the decision-making process in EcoRA. The model structure, features of the corresponding website and its current content is described in detail and proposed development and possible collaboration is outlined. The portal (DATEST) is located at http://projects.cba.muni.cz/datest. The aim of this work is to complement existing EcoRA decision-support tools with a web-based engine for storing and searching biological tests and methods used in EcoRA as there is currently no similar informational source available on the Internet.