HELCOM Map and Data Service Renewed
The HELCOM Map and Data Service, which has been serving as one of the largest hubs of spatial data for the Baltic Sea marine environment since 2010, has been completely redesigned and rebuilt. The new system consists of two components, which are seamlessly interlinked: the HELCOM Map and Data Service and the HELCOM Metadata Catalogue.
The HELCOM Map and Data Service consist of a map viewer user interface for visualising datasets related to the Baltic Sea, each dataset linked to a metadata record in the new HELCOM Metadata catalogue.
The HELCOM Metadata catalogue is a searchable catalogue containing a description and lineage of each map made available by HELCOM, enabling user to find and download spatial data, and linking to HELCOM Map and Data Service for viewing the specific dataset.
Compared to the previous version of HELCOM Map and Data Service, the new version provides the following key improvements:
- Searchable table of contents in the map viewer user interface
- Faster and more user-friendly map viewer, thanks to a more light-weight user interface which can run on any hardware platform (PC, Mac)
- Searchable metadata repository and keywords for filtering datasets in the metadata catalogue
- INSPIRE compliant metadata record for each dataset
With the current set of spatial data collected for assessments, HELCOM provides free access to more than 600 map layers in total, with maps ranging from biodiversity and species distribution to information on maritime traffic. The amount of available map layers will grow in the very near future, once the data used for the 2017 version of the State of the Baltic Sea report is published.
