The availability of well-managed marine data improves the resolution and accuracy of the national marine evidence base, related data products and helps to build our knowledge of the marine environment and economy, which are key supports in the development of a sustainable and climate resilient blue economy
Traditionally, marine data are collected using different approaches to address specific purposes. To support the reuse of data from a range of sources it is necessary to implement a level of coordination to data acquisition, governance and management with supporting technical sharing and access systems.
The project will implement best practice data governance, data signposting and data access services for relevant datasets enabling Irish marine data to be a leading example in the implementation of the Public Sector Information Directive and expanding the coordination and processing of marine data nationally and the integration and availability of those data via national and international portals.
The objectives of this project are to:
- Support discovery and availability of marine data online with relevant contextual information e.g. quality information.
- Develop the online data access portal and services to improve both discoverability and access to national marine data, including oceanographic, biological and socio-economic data.
- Develop technical guidance to increase inter-agency cooperation and information sharing at a national and EU level.
- Implement data acceptance guidelines and services to govern how 3rd party data are accepted and then managed, maintained and made available by the Marine Institute and partner agencies for reuse where appropriately licensed.
- Ensure that Irish marine data are available through national and regional data portals, such as EMODnet and other regional portals.
The project will build on existing capabilities to apply data standards and sharing approaches to national marine data, making these data available through national services such as data.marine.ie, data.gov.ie, Ireland's Marine Atlas, etc, and through regional portals such as EMODnet, and the UN’s OceanInfoHub, and others, building on the Institute’s role as an IODE-accredited data centre with significant marine data holdings collected under a number of national monitoring programmes e.g. the HD, WFD and MSFD.
The Marine Institute will use and develop best practices guidelines to coordinate data processes and to provide direct online access to valuable datasets, from both the Institute and from partner organisations. This will increase inter-agency cooperation and information sharing at a national and EU level. With these services data can be reused for new scientific analyses, decision support tools, and online information services.
This project will run for six years from 2022 to 2027
- Marine Data can be more easily integrated and reused, including via national and international portals.
- Improved understanding of what marine data are available to form a basis for improved marine management products and decision support tools e.g. for spatial planning, foreshore licensing, aquaculture management, marine renewable energy and climate analysis.
- Better definition and greater clarity as to the origin and quality of underlying data and information being used in decision making.
- Leveraging of current and future operational programmes through reuse of data collected, without incurring the otherwise substantial data acquisition costs.
- Improvements to data processes needed to underpin new MSP-related products and services, in addition to support programmes such as MSFD, DCF, aquaculture and food safety, climate and ocean renewable energy, etc.
- Data standards, technical database management and quality management processes will be implemented across additional Marine Institute datasets to enable the secondary use of relevant data from new programmes for MSP, MSFD and DCF purposes, for aquaculture and food safety management and for climate and ocean renewable energy services.
- Appropriate re-accreditation of the Data Management Quality Management Framework and extension of this Framework to make additional datasets available for Marine Spatial Planning, DCF, aquaculture and food safety, climate and other use cases.
- Technical data acceptance guidelines will be implemented with key partners to govern how 3rd party data are acquired and managed, including standards and guidelines to support data inter-operability and secondary use of data from a range of organisations for MSP and MSFD purposes will be published.
- Online marine.ie and related data access services and content will be updated improving how data key marine datasets can be discovered, view and accessed for reuse. This will include the upgrade and consolidation of data sharing services to move beyond sharing of metadata to the sharing of data.
- Additional Irish marine data will be made available through national and regional data portals, such as EMODnet and other international portals (e.g. the UN’s OceanInfoHub).