| Abstract | The EU has adopted a new Marine Directive and Maritime Policy, which includes a requirement for an overarching European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODNet), based upon a ‘systems of systems' approach. As part of the EMODNet Roadmap the EU has contracted a number of 3 year data pilots, for Geology, Chemistry, Biology, Habitats, and Hydrography.
The overall objective of the pilots is to migrate fragmented and inaccessible marine data into interoperable, continuous and publicly available data streams for complete maritime basins. The specific objectives of the pilots are:
- collating existing data from public and private organisations relating to the state of maritime basins; processing them into interoperable formats which includes agreed standards, common baselines or reference conditions;
- assessing their accuracy and precision and assembling them into common datasets;
- developing, testing, operating and maintaining a portal allowing public access and viewing of these data
The results will help to define processes, best technology and approximate costs of a final operational EMODNet. All pilots will adopt SeaDataNet standards.
The Seabed Mapping lot is complementing the ongoing EMODNet Hydrography project. In practice activities for both projects are combined, also because major part of the activities is undertaken for further developing the EMODNet Hydrography portal in services and coverage.
The following geographical information system layers will be produced:
- water depth in gridded form over whole of maritime basin on a grid of at least quarter a minute of longitude and latitude
- water depth in vector form with isobaths at a scale of at least one to one million
- depth profiles along tracklines
- coastlines
- underwater features - wrecks, seabed obstructions etc
The following strategy is applied for the EMODNet Hydrography and Seabed mapping development:
- Develop a high-end Hydrographic portal, outfitted with a powerful spatial database, that is complemented with WMS, and WFS services (OGC) to serve users and also to provide layers for e.g. the other EMODNet portals, the prototype European Atlas of the Seas, and the broad-scale European Marine Habitats map;
- Involve research institutes, monitoring authorities, and HO's, in providing hydrographic data sets for producing Digital Terrain Models (DTM) with specific resolution for each geographical region, that are loaded and integrated afterwards into the portals' spatial database;
- Include in the portal a metadata discovery service, by adopting the SeaDataNet CDI metadata standard, that gives clear information about the background data used for the DTM, the access restrictions and distributors; this also ensures the connection of the Hydrographic portal with the SeaDataNet portal.
Moreover the EMODNet Seabed Mapping contract features an extra Task 2 to lay the foundations for a future higher resolution mapping of seabeds in the maritime basins of Europe.
Task 2 will be achieved by i) compiling a concise overview of multibeam and single beam surveys for Europe's maritime basins and by ii) incorporating in the Hydrography portal an initial multibeam metadata directory and a number of publicly available sample multibeam data sets, that can be viewed in high resolution and downloaded without restrictions.
Next to contract partners there are an increasing number of associated partners that contribute actively with their data and expertise: the HO's of Norway, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal, OGS-RIMA, CNR-ISMAR, LNEG and NIOZ.
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