GeoSeas implements e-infrastructure of marine geological and geophysical data centres
Koen Verbrugggen, GSI
The GeoSeas Full Network meeting took place on April 18-19 in Santorini, organised by NOA – Oceanographic Agency of Greece.The Geo-Seas project is implementing an e-infrastructure of 26 marine geological and geophysical data centres located in 17 European maritime countries.
Users are enabled to identify, locate and access pan-European, harmonised and federated marine geological and geophysical datasets and derived data products held by the data centres through a single common data portal.
EMODnet project
Representing the GSI on day 1 were Maria Judge, Ali Robinson and Grainne O’Shea who presented their current progress report which highlighted the GSI’s involvement and successful completion of work packages including:
• WP 9 Installation and testing of Geo-seas components at data centres
• WP 10.2 Developing viewing services for seabed maps & geological logs
• WP 10.3 Standardisation & Harmonisation of seabed habitat mapping
• WP 11.1 Viewing Service High Resolution Seismic Data
• WP 11.2 Development & Demonstration of DTM & Viewing Services
In addition to the progress report, the GSI also had the opportunity to present on their new Global Map Viewer initiative which allows partner countries to view their data via web services. The mapping system is unique to those currently developed for European SDI data initiative as the coverage area is the extent of the world using WGS84 reference system. This will enable the integration of standardised services form Australia, Africa and the Americas and potentially positions the GSI to become involved with future transnational and global marine geosciesnce data initiatives.
Day 2 focused on a summary from each of the partners and reviewed project performance to date by the GeoSeas Advisory Board. The advisory board recommended an approach to delivering the final project report to the European Commission, and highlighted the need to reinforce validation and quality in the data components of the project.
GSI extended an invitation to all partners to participate in the INFOMAR Annual Seminar in University College Cork on October 11- 12 which has been purposely scheduled to coincide with the GeoSeas Final Project meeting in UCC the same week.
EMODNET – Geology
The final meeting of the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODNET) Geology Project http://www.emodnet-geology.eu/ was hosted by the Polish Geological Institute in Gdansk over two days 22-23 May 2012. The GSI was one of the 14 partners in attendance, with all partners having compiled marine geological data layers for the Baltic Sea, Great North Sea and the Celtic Sea.
Day one saw the work package leaders present updates on the individual data themes with data compiled over the course of the project to include new information on; seafloor geology; seafloor sediments; geological events and probability; aggregate and hydrocarbon resources.
The data layers have been integrated into the One-Geology Europe (1GE) portal http://onegeology-europe.brgm.fr/geoportal/viewer.jsp and are INSPIRE compliant. The 1GE portal currently holds maps of sea-bed sediments; sea-floor geology (lithology and stratigraphy); geological boundaries and major faults and a coastal behaviour layer.
The map layers for geological events and minerals will be added as soon as they are complete. GSI also presented a new Global Map Viewer displaying all GSI data layers compiled as part of EMODNET-Geology.
Further development of the web viewer is proposed as part of the new call for the next phase of the EMODNET Geology Lot in collaboration with project partners at the French and British Geological Surveys.
The final EMODNET-Geology report has been submitted and accepted by the EC Marine Directorate. Any outstanding data additions will be included to the project up to end of July.
