Terms of use

About these terms

These terms apply when you use Biohotspot (biohotspot.ai4wa.com): the map, projects, scenarios and reports, the map assistant, the API, the OGC service and the MCP server for AI agents. Biohotspot is run by The University of Western Australia (UWA), through its Centre for Natural and Technical Language Processing (NTLP), with Oceanwise Australia and AI4WA (see who built Biohotspot). By using it, or by signing in, you agree to these terms and to our privacy notice.

A free research service

Biohotspot is free to use and comes from university research. Features, data and limits will change, and parts of it may be unavailable at times. We may change or stop any part of it.

The data and its licences

The map data comes from national and global agencies and published research datasets. Each source keeps its own licence; the data catalogue lists them, and each open dataset has its own page among the open datasets. The Exmouth Gulf example project uses the Oceanwise Australia Exmouth Gulf Spatial Database with permission.

Some sources are for limited use only, for example non-commercial licences; the catalogue marks them. Do not use them, or results built from them, beyond what their licence allows without the source’s permission. When you publish or share results, credit the sources as their licences require.

Not advice

Area checks, habitat targets, Marxan options, recommendations, blue carbon figures, reports and the map assistant’s answers are estimates from the data available. They may be incomplete or wrong, and some are marked as rough. They are not legal, planning, regulatory, financial or other professional advice. Check anything that matters against the original sources before you rely on it.

Using Biohotspot fairly

Please don’t:

• try to get around access controls or rate limits;
• scrape the site instead of using the API or the OGC service, or run automated traffic that slows the service for others;
• resell or redistribute limited-use data, or present Biohotspot’s outputs as your own data product;
• upload material you do not have the right to share, or anything unlawful or harmful;
• use the map assistant or an AI agent to produce content that misrepresents the data or its sources.

Your account, API keys and connected apps

You are responsible for what happens under your account. Keep your password and API keys secret, and revoke any key you think has been exposed on the access page. An app you connect with your Biohotspot sign-in, such as ChatGPT or Claude, acts as you and can do what its tools allow, including adding data to projects you can edit; remove the connection in that app to stop it. Tell us at [email protected] if you believe your account has been misused.

Your projects and uploads

You keep the rights to the data you upload, and you are responsible for having the right to upload it. You allow us to store, check, process and display it so Biohotspot can work, and to show it to your project’s team. If you make a project public, visitors see only the uploads in use that have an open licence; heritage data and Indigenous land and sea data are shown to the team only, whatever the licence. You can delete your uploads and projects, and we delete your account when you ask; the privacy notice says how.

API, OGC service and MCP server

You may build scripts, research software, GIS projects and applications on the API, the OGC service and the MCP server, within these terms. The access page says how to connect. Say that your work uses Biohotspot and credit the underlying data sources. We may change the API, introduce limits or revoke access that is causing problems.

No warranty, limited liability

Biohotspot is provided as is, without warranties of any kind. To the extent the law allows, the University, the research group and their partners are not liable for any loss arising from your use of Biohotspot, its data or its outputs. Nothing in these terms limits rights you have under the Australian Consumer Law that cannot be excluded.

Suspension

We may suspend or close accounts, API keys or app connections that break these terms or put the service or other users at risk.

Changes, law and contact

We may update these terms and will change the date at the top when we do; continuing to use Biohotspot means you accept the update. These terms are governed by the laws of Western Australia. Questions: [email protected].