ATLAS Deliverable 8.4: Delivery of research outputs

• Main Authors: Collart, T, Larkin, K, Pesant, S, Gafeira, J
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2021
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4659034; https://zenodo.org/record/4659034

Marine data are needed for many purposes: for acquiring a better scientific understanding of the marine environment, but also, increasingly, to provide information and knowledge to support ocean and coastal economic developments and underpin evidence‐based ocean and wider environmental management decision making. Data must be of sufficient quality and at the right resolution to meet the specific users’ needs. They must also be accessible in a timely manner and in appropriate formats – not only in raw data but as integrated datasets, data products, etc. – for use by marine and maritime professionals. Such expert users span scientific research, policy and industry. In addition, providing engaging and user‐friendly interfaces and tools for wider society to explore marine data and information e.g. through visualisations, is vital to promote a knowledge‐driven, ocean literate society. In addition, the blue economy, policy makers, researchers and wider society increasingly require data that are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) across multiple parameters, spatial scales and resolutions. Many data services and initiatives already exist in Europe and there is a drive towards collaboration and interoperability of these to ensure data can be discovered through web services by human queries and through machine‐to‐machine communication. This ATLAS deliverable (D8.4) is driven by the philosophy of Open Data and Open Science, adding value to the diverse datasets produced by ATLAS, making them more FAIR and so, ultimately, increasing their long‐term use and impact. To this end, project partner Seascape Belgium (SBE) provided and customised a web‐GIS Platform for the ATLAS project. Using an open source geospatial content management system – GeoNode – the ATLAS GeoNode was developed as a tool to share, visualise and download geospatial data with the ATLAS consortium and wider stakeholders. In addition, ATLAS data and data products are being ingested into the European Marine Observation Data Network (EMODnet) as a long‐term solution to data availability, discovery and use. This report summarises the work conducted by SBE, in collaboration with University of Bremen (UniHB) and the PANGAEA2 information and data publisher for earth and environmental data, British Geological Survey (BGS) and others partners, to valorise the marine data being produced by ATLAS, namely building on existing methods and tools to add value, use and impact of marine data along the pipeline from data production to end‐user. This contributes in particular to the 3rd key objective of ATLAS, to transform new data, tools and understanding and make it accessible to wider stakeholders for effective ocean governance. To achieve this, SBE has worked together with UniHB (as data management and WP8 lead) and BGS to assess, optimise and – where possible – innovate the data flows in place. A key focus has been at the mid‐point of the “data pipeline”, where curated data can be ‘valorised’ through methods including data visualisation and data integration, to make them more accessible to multiand inter‐disciplinary research communities and to wider stakeholders including policy and industry. SBE administers the EMODnet Secretariat, and so has been able to facilitate direct dialogues between EMODnet Data Ingestion and the seven thematic areas of EMODnet (Bathymetry, Biology, Chemistry, Geology, Human Activities, Physics and Seabed Habitats) with ATLAS data providers to ensure a longer‐term ingestion of data into EMODnet. As a North Atlantic basin scale project with strong industry partnerships ATLAS has offered an opportunity to assess data flows and pipelines from major research activities and projects via existing data publishers and assembly centres to EMODnet, and to recommend further ways to optimise these in the future. This report also looks at the relevance of ATLAS data and outputs to policy and industry, including recommendations from meetings and consultations conducted by ATLAS WP6 and WP7. These include recommendations from ATLAS D6.4 that a desire from offshore maritime industry to see greater connectivity and interoperability between marine data to increase their impact and use and to streamline the process of marine data discovery, uptake and exploitation. Particular focus has also been dedicated to investigate the flow of data from PANGAEA data publisher to EMODnet. This has resulted in stronger collaborations between the two initiatives, leading to more systemic and operational exchanges in data flows, including a move towards automated data harvesting. The project has also offered an opportunity to develop an innovative online GIS platform as a community tool for sharing and integrating geospatial data. This was developed as a pilot and the positive user feedback shows its potential for making data ‘come alive’, connecting it to wider stakeholders and offering useful maps and products which marine and maritime professionals can use for their professional needs e.g. marine spatial planning. Recommendations from this report in terms of data stewardship and data flows can be taken forward by marine data initiatives and by the marine research community in the future. The advances that have been taken in ATLAS towards FAIR data are important steps towards streamlining the ingestion of data into EMODnet. In EMODnet, data are discoverable through data and web services, contributing to the European Union’s policy on marine knowledge, the “Marine Knowledge 2020” initiative. Here, EMODnet has a key mandate to transform Europe’s fragmented data landscape into an interoperable sharing framework, in addition to supporting coordinated European observation activities. This will increases the information available, and therefore the efficiency, for marine and maritime professionals from industry, public authorities and academia to discover and use marine data, information and knowledge. This encourages innovation that reduces our present uncertainty as to what is happening beneath the sea surface. Beyond 2020, EMODnet is working with key data initiatives to federate existing infrastructure and contribute to a Blue‐Cloud cyber platform3 that will offer enhanced capabilities for marine research including a virtual research laboratories, computational power and storage and the latest data discovery and interoperability to access data from a large diversity of data initiatives and data providers.