ATLAS Deliverable 8.4: Delivery of research outputs
Creators: name: Collart, T
name: Larkin, K
name: Pesant, S
name: Gafeira, J
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2021

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