a Pan-European Infrastructure for Ocean and

Marine Data Management

Dick M.A. Schaap – MARIS (SeaDataNet technical coordinator)

 Background

• Data availability of vital importance for marine research

• European data set is fragmented
• Not always quality controlled
• Not always easily accessible
• In 35 countries bordering European seas
• more than 600 scientific laboratories from government
organizations and private industry collect data
• use various sensors on board of research vessels, submarines,
fixed and drifting platforms, airplanes and satellites
• measure physical, geophysical, geological, biological and
chemical parameters, biological species, etc.
 SeaDataNet project

• EU Sixth Framework Programme

• Integrated Infrastructure Initiative (I3)
• 1 April 2006 to 31 March 2011
• Objectives
• develop an efficient distributed pan-European marine data
management Infrastructure for managing large and diverse
data sets
• network existing professional data centres of 35 countries,
active in data collection
• provide integrated databases of standardised quality on-
line
 SeaDataNet partnership

49 partners including:
• Major oceanographic
institutes of 35 countries
• National Oceanographic
Data Centres (NODCs)
• Divisions of major national
marine research institutes
• 3 satellite data centres
• 3 scientific modelling
centres
• 2 SMEs experts in
software development
• 3 International
organisations
 Building on experience

• Data management of scientific projects, e.g. MTPII-

MATER, CANIGO, OMEX, MERSEA, etc.
• Leaders of Data Management Concerted Actions
• MEDAR/MEDATLAS II - Mediterranean Data Archaeology and
Rescue, aiming to make available a comprehensive data product of
temperature, salinity and bio-chemical data in the Mediterranean and
Black Sea through a wide international cooperation
• Sea-Search – The gateway to Oceanographic and Marine Data &
Information in Europe, to provide an effective navigation tool to
oceanographic and marine data and information sources for European
marine waters and to centres in Europe with expertise and skills in
oceanographic and marine data & information management.
• Bringing in new partners – satellite data centres
SeaDataNet components
 Infrastructure versions

• Version 0
Continuation and maintenance of existing Sea-Search systems with minor
modifications
• Version 1
All data centres involved in upgraded meta-databases
Technical Task Team partners involved in transparent data access,
security, monitoring, viewing services = trans-national access
Pre-operational by November 2007 and operational by February 2008
• Version 2
All data centres involved in trans-national access and access upgraded
Operational by 2010
 SeaDataNet Data Policy

• Metadata
• free and open access, no registration required
• each data centre should provide the meta-data in standardized format
to populate the catalogue services
• Data and products services
• the general case if free and open access/mandatory registration
• a “SeaDataNet role” (partner, academic, commercial etc.) is attributed
to each user
• Each NODC attributes the roles to the users of its of country
• Out of the partnership, the roles are assigned by SeaDataNet user-desk
• each data centre node delivers data according to the user’s role and
its local regulation
• each data centre should provide freely the data sets necessary to
develop the common products
 Discovery services

• Marine environmental data sets

(EDMED)
• Marine environmental research
projects (EDMERP)
• Observing systems (EDIOS)
• Research Cruise Summary
Reports (CSR)
• Common Data Index (CDI)
• Directory of marine
organisations (EDMO)
 Common Data Index = linking pin

• Index to individual data

sets
• Approx. 200000 entries
from 10 partners
• ISO19115 metadata
standard has been
adopted
• On-line searchable
directory
• Direct access to on-
line data sets,
catalogues or e-mail
request
 Technical developments

• Establishment of common vocabularies

• Upgrading metadata formats for harmonisation and interrelationships
(ISO 19115 as basis)
• Upgrading metadata entry and retrieval systems:
• XML exchange (push and pull)
• XML validation services
• JavaTool (MIKADO) for generation of XML files
• Online Content Management Systems (CMS)
• Adopting Web services technology
• Vocabularies
• Metadata catalogues
• Defining common transport formats (NetCDF, ODV ASCII and MedAtlas)
• Developing delivery services (shopping basket and download manager)
• Developing viewing services (OGC mapping, ODV software, ..)
 SeaDataNet User’s portal schema V1
User Data
General request Metadata request Data request Status of registration download
request

Project info metadata data Registr.

Standards Cross search My transact.
CDI Shopping Requests
Software EDIOS EDMED
status AAA
basket
Vocabularies CSR EDMERP EDMO manager

Organisation + User
data source id Register

CSR EDIOS CDI

Ifremer Database

EDMO
EDMED
BODC Database

+ EDMERP
at BSH at BODC at MARIS
BSH Database
Metadata & Data catalogues

Entry point for access hits ...

services for metadata
Data downloading services
Download managers in Data centers
Visualization services (WMS) for V2
 Involvement in other networks

• SeaDataNet partners are involved in many other European

and international projects, contributing and safeguarding good
data management. Examples are:
• Services for the marine geological institutes in Europe in the projects
EUMARSIN, EUROCORE and EUROSEISMICS .
See www.eu-seased.net

• Services for EUROGOOS for the European Directory of Ocean-

observing Systems (EDIOS). See www.edios.org

• Partners in the MERSEA project (GMES) for the set up of the Mersea
Information Management (MIM) system

• Partners in the Humboldt project (GMES) contributing to a European

Spatial Data Infrastructure
www.eu-seased.net
a searchable catalogue of over 2.5 million line kilometres
of marine seismic and sonar survey data held at
European institutions
a searchable catalogue of over 300.000 seafloor samples
from the ocean basins and continental shelves, held at
European institutions
 Supportive to international initiatives and
directives
• GEO-GEOSS initiative (ad-hoc Group of Earth Observations
of G8) : Global Earth Observation System of Systems
• GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) of
ESA and EC as European component of GEOSS
• INSPIRE, new directive for spatial data infrastructure in
Europe

And can provide added-value for Marine Strategy

Implementation, providing a wealth of complimentary data (in
time and spatial coverage) for high quality assessments
 Website

www.seadatanet.org