SeaDataNet: Development of a Pan-European Infrastructure for Ocean and Marine Data Management

SeaDataNet (2006 -2010) is a major Pan-European and EU-funded project, undertaken by the National Oceanographic Data Centres (NODQ and the Satellite Data Centres (SDC) of nearby all coastal states bordering the European seas. It focuses on interconnecting the data centres to provide integrated on-line access to the most comprehensive sets of multidisciplinary in-situ and remote sensing marine data, meta-data and products. The presentation gives an overview of the present services and products of the SeaDataNet infrastructure (www.seadtanet.org). It highlights the progress made in the first year of the SeaDataNet project and present the conceptual design of Version 1 of the interoperable infrastructure, that is planned to be operational in Beta mode by October 2007. At the core of these developments are the definition and adoption of formats, following international ISO basic standards, set-up of Web services and content governance structures for Vocabularies, Discovery services, Transformation services, Downloading services and Viewing services.