SEA-SEARCH = European Directory of Marine Environmental Datasets

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Currently, EDMED describes more than 3300 data sets, from a wide range of disciplines, held at over 630 Data Holding Centres from 30 countries across Europe. It has established itself as a European standard for indexing and searching data sets relating to the marine environment. The EDMED format was revised and upgraded as part of the Sea-Search initiative and recently a brand new search interface has been implemented.

European Directory of Marine Environmental Datasets - EDMED

The European Directory of Marine Environmental Data (EDMED) initiated in 1991 by BODC (UK), with EU-funding, and updated and expanded during the Sea-Search project, is a high level “discovery” inventory, providing a user searchable, web-based directory of data sets relating to the marine environment. EDMED is a comprehensive reference to the marine data sets and collections held within European research laboratories, so as to provide marine scientists, engineers and policy makers with a simple mechanism for their identification. It covers a wide range of disciplines including marine meteorology; physical, chemical and biological oceanography; sedimentology; marine biology and fisheries; environmental quality; coastal and estuarine studies; marine geology and geophysics; etc. Data sets are catalogued in EDMED irrespective of their format (e.g. digital databases or files, analogue records, paper charts, hard-copy tabulations, photographs and videos, geological samples, biological specimens etc). Although the directory is targeted primarily at data sets that can be made accessible to other users, encouragement is also given to holders of working data sets, or data of a confidential or restricted availability, to make their data known through EDMED.

Maintenance of EDMED and formats

Institutes can create their EDMED entries following the format and basic guidelines in the document:
How to prepare entries for EDMED — October 1999 (161 KB)

The EDMED forms are collated by the SEA-SEARCH network of national collating centres, who are responsible for seeking out, collating and maintaining their national EDMED directories following the format and guidelines in the document:
Instructions for collating EDMED entries — January 2000 (66 KB)

The compilation and maintenance of entries for EDMED is coordinated by the National Oceanographic Data Centres (NODCs) of the Sea-Search-SeaDataNet network, who contact and communicate with institutes in their countries to gather and to ensure up-to-date information and inclusion of important marine data sets. Entries are prepared by using an offline MS-Access entry software program or alternatively by exchange of ISO19115-compliant XML-files. This latter, using the ISO metadata standard, is designed for those partners who hold EDMED-like information in their own databases. Dedicated Java Tools have been developed to generate EDMED XML files automatically. All national directories are assembled into a single centralised system managed by the BODC and are made available via the Sea-Search website (see above).The overall EDMED coordination and quality control is done by the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC), UK. In SeaDataNet this activity will be continued by BODC.

Querying EDMED

The EDMED directory can be queried and browsed by users via the Sea-Search web portal. Users can choose between a simple and an advanced query interface to specify a combination of search criteria. The resulting entries, matching the query, are presented in a browse list, which indicates the number selected and allows for browsing between the listed results. This browse list can be sorted by a number of key fields. Additional details per entry can be viewed and the user can skip from one entry to another. The names of the data holding centre and the national collating centre are listed with hyperlinks, which provide the full address and profile description of the organisation.

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Central Organisations database – EDMO

The EDMED metadirectory is maintained together with the European Directory of Marine Environmental Research Projects (EDMERP), the Cruise Summary Report (CSR) database, the European Directory of the Ocean-observing System (EDIOS) and the Common Data Index (CDI) metadirectory. Each of these includes relations to organisations. A Central Organisations database has been set-up to streamline and to manage these addresses and organisation profiles efficiently and in a consistent way. This is kept up-to-date by the NODCs of the Sea-Search – SeaDataNet network, using an online Content Management System. This European Directory of Marine Organisations – EDMO already lists more than 1.000 Research Institutes, Data Holding Centres, Monitoring Agencies, Governmental and private organisations, that are in one way or another engaged in oceanographic and marine research activities and/or data & information management or support services.