EMODNet Hydrography Commences in Portugal
The latest phase of the hydrography part of the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODNet) has commenced with a meeting in Lisbon, Portugal, hosted by the Portuguese Marine and Atmospheric Institute (IPMA). As well as IPMA, the project involves leading hydrographic offices and marine institutes, agencies and private companies across Europe. OceanWise is heading up the UK effort, with the National Oceanographic Centre (NOC) acting as regional centre for Northwest Europe. The project is being led by Maris, The Netherlands.
Survey metadata, data and the DEM are all publicly accessible through discovery, view and download services from an easy to use portal which is fully compliant with the EU’s INSPIRE Directive. The DEM will support the emerging European Atlas of the Seas and other data sharing initiatives and aims to provide the European input into GEBCO, which is part of the scope of the current project. EMODNet does not replace national initiatives but complements them and provides a common platform for future development across the EU.
EMODNet is fully funded by the European Commission through the Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE) and has the objective to migrate fragmented and inaccessible marine data into interoperable, continuous and publicly available data streams for complete maritime basins. There are seven themes in this latest phase of work. The hydrography theme takes hydrographic survey data from EU member states and makes it discoverable consistently through a central portal. The hydrography part is also developing a medium resolution digital elevation model (DEM) of European Seas using single beam and high resolution multi beam survey data.
The EMODNet DEM complements OceanWise’s Marine Themes DEM which provides a high resolution dataset and includes chart derived data where there are gaps in the coverage of survey data.
