Contents: Introduction Objectives of the Sea Search Portal website Rationale and Framework Importance of Marine data management Aims of Sea Search activities Suggestions

This website has been set up and is being operated and further developed to provide an effective navigation tool to data and information sources in Europe, to oceanographic data and information, managed by European centres, and to centres in Europe with expertise and skills in oceanographic and marine data & information management.

• To support researchers, engineers, and other users of oceanographic and marine data to identify and to take benefit from available data resources
• To make researchers aware of the added value of proper data management for their work and projects
• To support researchers to develop appropriate data management plans in projects and proposals
• To provide researchers with information on expert data management organisations in Europe
• To stimulate cooperation between researchers and expert data management organisations in Europe

Multidisciplinary ocean and marine data are collected by many hundreds (>900) of research institutes, governmental organizations and private industry in the countries bordering the European seas. Measurements include physical, geophysical, geological, biological and chemical parameters, biological species and others. The data sets are collected at a very considerable cost by using various heterogeneous observing sensors installed on board of research vessels, submarines and airplanes, fixed and drifting platforms and satellites. Many users need both in-situ and remote sensing observations, which are complementary: the in situ sensors measuring hundreds of physical and bio-chemical parameters on a limited number of sites of the whole water column, and the satellites measuring regularly a small number of parameters over large geographical areas of the atmospheric (and to some extent, the bottom) interface. This fuels a strong demand for intercalibration and combined data sets.

Observation data are of prime value for research, but also for monitoring, predicting and managing the marine environment, assessing fish stocks and biodiversity, offshore engineering, controlling any hazard or disaster, and the tourist industry. Overall there are many thousands of end users, based in the research sector, government and industry, and intermediate users; communities, such as e.g. those that are in charge of following-up the implementation of international protocols, conventions and agreements for protection of the seas (OSPAR, HELCOM, Bucharest, and Barcelona conventions), the European environmental policy concerning Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM), the Water Framework Directive, and the forthcoming Marine Strategy Directive.

The primary goal of Sea-Search (2002 – 2005) is to provide users with a central overview of ocean and marine data & information, collected and managed by research institutes, monitoring agencies and data holding centres in the countries bordering the European seas. Sea-Search focused on metadata and has established and populated an array of directories and overviews of ocean and marine data & information resources from 30 countries in Pan-Europe; these are available from the Sea-Search portal website www.sea-search.net

SeaDataNet will succeed Sea-Search beginning 2006. It continues the operation & maintenance of the Sea-Search directory services and expands their coverage to 36 countries in and around Europe and 2 international organisations (IOC-IODE and ICES). Moreover SeaDataNet will focus on providing transparent online access to available oceanographic and marine data sets and data products. Inter alia it will interconnect the existing ocean & marine data management centres and enhance and harmonize their current data management facilities and procedures. Thus it will create and operate an efficient Pan-European distributed marine data management infrastructure, accessible on-line through a unique portal, and in agreement with the principles of the European initiative for a spatial data infrastructure, INSPIRE.

Sea-Search is undertaken by a Pan-European network of 33 National Oceanographic Data Centres (NODCs), marine information services and divisions of major national institutes, from 30 coastal states bordering all European seas. Each centre manages large data holdings and is highly skilled in providing professional data management services & support to a wide range of institutes and research projects, nationally and internationally.

SeaDataNet will expand this network with NODCs from 6 additional coastal states, 2 international organizations (IOC, ICES), 3 satellite data centres - key players from the ocean satellite data community in Europe - and 3 scientific modelling centres - experts in developing scientific data and information products, and providing training in use of data.

Keys to the success of community research projects and to an effective support of marine economic activities are the speed and the ease with which users can identify, locate, get access, exchange and use oceanographic and marine data & information. Further these data & information must carry a certain overall data quality level.

Data and Information Management plays a vital role in achieving these goals. It assists science, it safeguards scientific data for future use by a wider community and moreover it enables to combine these scientific data with other available oceanographic and marine data resources for a wide range of applications.

Given the large and still expanding size of diversity in types of data, organisations engaged in data acquisition, volume of data acquired, and offer of computer technologies for data processing, storing, retrieving and distribution, Data and Information Management has become a professional discipline and service. It requires Data Management organisations or units that collaborate with and give service to scientists and that are skilled in processing, quality controlling, archiving, producing added-value dataproducts and disseminating of data & dataproducts.

A closer collaboration on a Pan-European scale is essential to achieve a more cost effective approach to ocean and marine data and information management and to fulfil the growing demand for ocean and marine data & information from scientists and other communities.

Each of the Sea-Search centres is operating in their country as national data centre or focal point for oceanographic and marine data & information. They are representative nodes in their countries with links to other organisations, active in marine research and marine environmental management, thus monitoring and overseeing national marine research activities and marine data flows. The partnership has working relations with and is supported by EuroGOOS, active in operational oceanography, and various GMES projects, active in combining marine in-situ observation data, marine remote sensing data and information, and mathematical models to provide further insights and forecasts of marine environmental processes.

The Sea Search initiative has its roots in the EC-MAST programme and expanded in number of partners, in participating countries and in scope of work in the EC-EESD programme. The next steps will be undertaken within the EC-FP6 SeaDataNet project.

• To develop and operate a pan-european infrastructure for ocean and marine data management
• to develop, maintain and electronically publish jointly meta-data products/directories
• to explore data access methods and to develop a strong overall foundation for online data access
• To improve the exchange, availability and accessability of ocean & marine data and information within Europe and including non-EC countries riperian to all seas bordering Europe
• to exchange experience and to cooperate in development, promotion and implementation of data & information management practices and methods
• to develop and organize an overall capability for handling, processing, quality-controlling and archiving a variety of oceanographic and marine data types, anticipating differences in capabilities of individual partners and the evolvement of new data types.

Suggestions or comments for this Sea Search website are very welcome and can be sent by e-mail to the Sea Search co-ordinator, ir D.M.A. Schaap of MARIS in the Netherlands.

E-mail: info@sea-search.net

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