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EMODnet Secretariat progress update – October 2017

This is the third Secretariat progress update since the start of EMODnet PHASE III (2017-2020). It covers activities from projects in the period July, August and September 2017 supplemented with information from the Secretariat and related...

EMODnet Secretariat progress update – October 2017

This update is largely based on the quarterly reports of the different EMODnet groups (Thematic lots, Sea- basin Checkpoints, Data Ingestion) supplemented with updates from the Secretariat. This is the third Secretariat progress since the start of the EMODnet Development Phase III (2017-2020) and covers activities developed within EMODnet in the period July-August-September 2017.

EMODnet progress overview

Overall progress highlights

EMODnet Phase III will require stronger efforts to coordinate aspects of the work across thematic assembly groups to ensure stronger coherence and efficiency. During the 8th Steering Committee (September 2017, Rome) important steps were taken forward with the agreement of a more coherent Visual identity and development of endorsement of a new improved monitoring system for assessing progress and usage of all the data portals. The new indicators and monitoring scheme will be tested by the portal developers during a pilot exercise consisting of three sub-phases. It is expected that the portals will be ready to report the new list of indicators in Spring 2018. This new system will monitor portals performance in a more efficient, automated and comparable way. It will also enable to better assess progress and identify areas of improvement.

The EMODnet Visual Identity Guidelines were also endorsed: a reinforced, harmonised Visual Identity through all EMODnet groups is key to support communication activities and also to support a stronger EMODnet branding. Logos and payoffs for the portals were discussed.

Specific progress and achievements of thematic groups

  • EMODnet Bathymetry/HRSM reports on good progress of the preparation of metadata and formatted datasets by project, as well as with the pre-gridding and pre-processing of those datasets following the guidelines agreed upon at their kick-off meeting. Also important is the signature of the missing subcontract agreement with one of the partners (GST, Denmark).

  • EMODnet Geology indicated significant progress in the work package dealing with one new features of this Phase III: submerged landscapes (WP8). Data has been identified and compiled for the pilot areas. Guidelines for the other Work Packages have been updated and distributed and work is progressing as planned. Also important is the agreement signed with Delft University of Technology for their supply of a full coverage pan-European coastline migration analysis.

  • EMODnet Seabed Habitats has started identifying new sources of seabed habitat data and maps relying on their own partnership and network as they are not part of Data Ingestion. Nevertheless, good progress has been done so that Data Ingestion services can be used. In particular, Seabed Habitat partners can become “data centers” for Data Ingestion, so they will be able to process data submissions related to seabed habitats received through Data Ingestion Service.

  • EMODnet Physics has made very significant progress in several areas: the release of a ERDDAP server, the integration of first under water noise data in the portal, as well as the development of a preliminary river runoff product. In addition to that, international collaboration has translated into EMODnet Physics powering now the Southern Ocean Observing System data portal.

  • In addition to updating and completing the existing data infrastructure, EMODnet Chemistry is focusing on carrying out their strategy to provide access to marine litter data and create products out of them. This includes collaborating with experts from MSFD and JPI as well as developing an agreement with OSPAR to share beach litter data. They are also considering a new design for their portal with special focus given to Data access and Data Products services.

  • EMODnet Biology reports on advances in all its work packages, including the publication of their first deliverable: the assessment of data and databases, including list of datasets that will be used for the creation of products. They also highlighted efforts invested in organizing an important international stakeolder workshop entitled Essential Marine Biological Data Products Workshop, which will take place in London on 10th October 2017. The overall objective of this workshop is to define the requirements for data products by the project, closely working with key stakeholders in the Regional Sea commissions, and the EU and international bodies

  • EMODnet Human Activities published updates on 5 datasets including aquaculture, dredging, environment and major ports as 5 new blog entries. A Live Chat has been implemented in their portal. In addition, important meetings were organised to advance on Shipping density maps from AIS signals.

  • In the previous reporting period, EMODnet Ingestion informed about the development of services to support data providers and partners with submission workflow such as the View Submission service (or Summary Records service) and the Data Wanted service. These services have already been implemented on the ingestion portal, which has also been updated to take into account Secretariat suggestions regarding style harmonization throughout portals.

EMODnet Sea-basin Checkpoints progress

EMODnet Sea-basin Checkpoints for the Arctic, Atlantic Baltic and Black Sea are entering the last year of their 36 month project duration. Checkpoints for the North Sea and Med Sea finished their contracts even though they were present in the Checkpoint Methods Workshop reported in the “Recent meetings and events” section.

  • The Arctic Checkpoint has implemented several upgrades in their portal in order to assist with the reporting of challenge results to the users. This included the development of a generic online map viewer and the addition of geographical information used in the challenges to that map viewer so that the results of the challenged could be displayed.

  • After the agreement on the final product list (56) to be implemented in Sextant, Atlantic Checkpoint teams have worked in obtaining the targeted products and they have sent one product example to Sextant back-end to test their implementation. They have also made progress in their deliverable “Fitness for use of web portal”, which contains the descriptions of the products and relevant links to lists of data sources.

  • Baltic Checkpoint activities were focused on the remaining products development and the second data adequacy reports and they published several upgrades on their data portal, namely, the Met Ocean products and the wind Energy products. They have also finished screening of information on management plans for 257 Natura 200 sites. Also interesting is the fact that they will not hold any meeting in 2017 as partners have run out of travel budget.

  • Black Sea Checkpoint follow the same methods that the Atlantic and MedSea checkpoints and use Sextant catalogue to upload the metadata for their products (62 in total). In this reporting period, teams have made progress in developing the targeted products for all challenges. For Climate change and Coast challenges the lack of long-term data hinders obtaining the desired products.

EMODnet data portals usage

Thematic portals regularly report their user statistics as part of the EMODnet monitoring system based on progress indicators. The following summary covers the three-month period July-September 2017. As already mentioned, the initial list or indicators is currently being revised and new indicators are tested. In general, reported numbers denote a slightly less intense use of the portals, which seems reasonable since the reporting period covered the summer season.

  • The number of CDIs for EMODNET Bathymetry datasets has increased only slightly this period (less than 1%. The number of DTM downloads decreased this quarter (8569, while it was 9691 in the previous one), 5062 linked to the WCS service, which allows the user to draw and download their own area of interest. Popularity of web services such WMS, WFS and WMTS to view and download data and maps is very high, approximately 20000 visits per month are related to those services. United States is consistently the more active country in using these services, followed by Spain.

  • EMODnet Geology reported reports for the first time on their portal usage statistics. We have a first indication of map downloads, yet not complete as some of the map products are still hosted in institutions which do not have the capacity to count them. They indicate a similar number of downloads (50 approximately) for all maps (Coastal Behaviour, Events and Probabilities, Minerals…) . They have only managed to identify the emails from their users, so this would in principle enable some follow up, but in many cases it is a personal email, so it is not possible to identify the organisations who have downloaded the maps. Determining the main pages utilised in the portal is not possible yet and is planned for next report.

  • The number of download sessions in the last three months from EMODnet Seabed Habitats decreased to 362 (it was 505 in the former period April-June 2017). This decrease concerned mostly the downloads of maps surveys. Other products, like the recently updated broad-scale habitat map, had a similar number of downloads to las period (around 150). The number of visitors decreased slightly (1300 for the three months instead of 1200) and again research was the most mentioned purpose for download. Not surprisingly, users came mostly from the academic world, even though there were also governmental agencies and companies who downloaded the maps.

  • EMODnet Physics provides a very comprehensive overview of how their services are used, both in terms of data and products downloaded, pages viewed etc., which is also accessible through their dashboard (www.emodnet-physics.eu/map/dashboard/). The landing portal accesses amounted to 3805 in this period, which is similar to values reported in previous periods. This includes all “static” pages: the home, the catalogue, the login, the news… In this period, it was Germany and the United States the countries that used the static portal pages the most. It is also possible to compare numbers related to the use of “dynamic” pages, which show dynamic maps, products and services, including web services (WMS, WFS and WSSOAP). Numbers change greatly, not necessarily due to a lost in popularity, but sometimes due to a reorganization of plots/maps into the portal. Web services ware accessed more than 93000 times in this quarter, with the United States representing more than 90% of the uses, mostly through WSSOAP. Despite being remarkable, these high numbers may be doped. If we do not take into account US, web accesses are similar to the ones in the previous reporting period.

  • The EMODnet Chemistry portal makes available now around 20000 more datasets (865281 in total), out of which approximately three quarters are of unrestricted access. In the lastquarter, the portal registered 18 downloads from 7 different users. But there were also many more downloads of EMODnet Chemistry data performed through the SeaDataNet portal (98) from 33 different users in different countries including China, Russia and South Korea. The most visualized DIVA maps via the WMS server vary a lot depending on the reporting period, there is not a clear more popular product. In this case, it was the water body nitrate in the North Sea.

  • Datasets accessible through EMODnet Biology increased in a 12% (from to 702 to 796) while the number of downloads in this period was 94. The number of unique visitors was 30629 for this quarterly reporting period. Users must indicate the purpose of their downloads on a form. Not only scientists, but also users from the private sector and the administration downloaded data from the portal.

  • EMODnet Human Activities reported a total of 380 downloads in this quarterly period (428 the previous one). Once again Wind Farms was the most downloaded layer (62 while it was 44 in the previous reporting period). These downloads also include initial requests for WFS links. There are no changes in the sector where the users come from: Energy, Research and Environment, are the most mentioned ones. With respect to the number of unique page views, total figure are comparable to the ones in previous quarterly periods (around 2300 adding the three months, still very far from other portals). It is interesting to note that many of the visitors come from the private sector.

  • The Data Ingestion Service has increased the number from 5000 in April 2017 to 8000 in September 2017. This reflects the greater visibility obtained through the Central Portal and rest of thematic lots which have included references and links to Data Ingestion in their own webs.

  • EMODnet Sea-basin Checkpoints are now all reporting on traffic on their portals. It is possible to compare the number of visits and there are considerable differences. Atlantic Checkpoint portal is the most visited one, 800 sessions in the period July-August-September 2017, followed by the Baltic (286) and the Black Sea (186). The Arctic portal reports only on 21 new visits (most of the days the portal had no traffic). This number is much lower, however, it must be taken into account that they report on the number of new visits (like Black Sea), and not in the number of unique sessions, like the other two.

  • Finally, the average number of unique visitors to the Central Portal has seen an increase in the last month (16000, whereas It was around 14000 in the previous months of the year). This may be linked to the dissemination activities linked to the Open Sea Lab competition, but also to the new services (EMODnet catalogue and map viewer). It is again the most visited portal of EMODnet familiy.

Challenges to be addressed

  • The difficulties to engage the Danish Geodata Agency (GST) to contribute their data to EMODnet Bathymetry, have finally been overcome with the singing of a subcontract.

  • Other thematic lots make reference to challenges related to the development of specific products. For instance, EMODnet Chemistry encountered some issues selecting the kind of parameters that should be visualized and the type of maps to be used for environmental status assessment in the context of MSFD (EMODnet Chemistry).EMODnet Chemistry also highlighted several difficulties related to data products with relevance for MSFD purposes, both in terms of evaluating how fit for use they were at present, and also in terms of involving MSFD experts who could provide feedback in their meetings.

  • EMODnet Biology had to re-schedule a workshop which should help with the definition of products to be developed in the next months. This delay implies there will be less time for the actual development of products.

User feedback

  • EMODnet thematic portals have become now an important tool to provide services to users, and improving interaction with them is one of the priorities of Phase III. For this reason, they now offer support to users through a help desk which must be available during office hours and deal with requests and feedback in a timely manner. Feedback is essential to improve the service, and it can also be a source of examples of how EMODnet provides benefits to different communities. Some thematic lots, like EMODnet Bathymetry or EMODnet Physics relate mostly technical enquiries from users, which are generally solved in 1-2 days. EMODnet Seabed Habitats has signed their website up to http://peek.usertesting.com, which uses members of the public to provide feedback on a website via a 5-min screencast. In some other cases, users make suggestions about possible sources of data (Human Activities) or improvements to the portal. It is also worth highlighting that both Biology and Seabed Habitats received enquiries related to the type of licences they use for their data products (type CC-BY).

Cross-thematic interactions

  • Improved cross-thematic interactions are reflected by the increased collaboration and exchange of information amongst the different EMODnet groups. Seabed Habitats is particularly active in this regard: they have reviewed the Data Adequacy Reports of all the Checkpoints and compiled a list of points relevant to their theme suggesting also possible actions. They have also been in contact with Data Ingestion to sum efforts in getting new seabed habitat data and maps and with EMODnet Biology on various issues, including the use of OBIS infrastructure. EMODnet Physics and EMODnet Biology have discussed about the sea mammals database currently managed by Physics. EMODnet Physics is planning to develop their river discharge products in cooperation with EMODnet Chemistry. EMODnet Geology reports on-going conversations with Seabed Habitats, HRSM/Bathymetry (formalised on a plan) and Human Activities on different datasets of common interest. Human Activities have received feedback from the other thematic lots to better define the requirements vessel density maps to be published on their portal, and which will be presented to EMSA.

Recent meetings and events

  • EMODnet Technical Working Group met in Genua 05-07 July 2017, with representatives from all Thematic lots as well as the Secretariat and the Central Portal. The meeting allowed setting the bases to accomplish the first EMODnet catalogue and implement the EMODnet Geoviewer which are currently online in the Central Portal. This implied making progress in interoperability between data products provided by all thematic portals.

  • Two important events took place back to back in Rome between the 12-15 September. TheEMODnet Checkpoint Methods Workshop was followed by the 8thEMODnet Steering Committee Meeting. The Workshop provided an opportunity to discuss the methods followed by the Checkpoints in their respective sea basins with a view to mainstream approaches. The first SC Meeting of Phase III allowed making significant progress in several common endeavors and clarify priorities, counting on the presence not only of the Thematic Group Coordinators, but also EASME and DG MARE. The EMODnet Secretariat has been renewed and expanded and it was presented there.

  • The Open Sea Lab kick-off information day took place on 22 September in De Serre, Antwerp (Belgium). This event marked the official launch of enrollment for the 1st EMODnet Open Sea Lab (http://www.opensealab.eu), a hackathon to use marine data provided by EMODnet which will take place in November. The event consisted on several keynote speeches and a round table and was live streamed.

Upcoming EMODnet meetings and events

  • EMODnet Data Products Workshop, 10 October, London, UK. Representatives from all four regional sea commissions, transatlantic partnerships, industry, conservation and management organisations meet in London for an EMODnet Biology meeting to steer the development of key biological data products.

More information

More detailed information can be found on the EMODnet thematic and sea-basin checkpoint portals, also accessible through the EMODnet Central Portal.

Thematic portals

Sea-basin checkpoint portals

Data Ingestion Service