The development of new analytical tools opens new opportunities to use of primary biodiversity data to e.g. generate predictive models of species distribution. This in turn generates broader opportunities and scenarios under which biodiversity data can be used. Biodiversity modeling uses primary species occurrence data, such as that served by the GBIF data portal (www.gbif.net) and relates it to other types of data (e.g. ecological, geographic, environmental, climatic, etc).

Biodiversity modeling is proving to be a very valuable tool for decision-making in many fields; from predicting impacts of global climate change on biodiversity, assessing the geographic potential of alien invasive species, tracking the spread of diseases and risk of disease transmission, identifying suitable places for establishing protected areas to assessing the likelihood of finding rare/endemic species, etc.