Minutes of the 11th EMODnet Steering Committee Meeting

Meeting Venue: Zebrastraat, Zebrastraat 32, Ghent, Belgium

Dates: Monday 2 September (09:30 CEST) - Tuesday 3 September 2019 (12:30 CEST)

Meeting Chair: Jan-Bart Calewaert (Head, EMODnet Secretariat)

Go to the Meeting Agenda and Documents

Participants

List of Actions

Meeting Minutes

DAY 1, Monday 2 September 2019

MEETING STARTS AT 9:30 (Steering Committee only)

1. Welcome & introduction (Jan-Bart Calewaert)

Jan-Bart Calewaert welcomed participants, noting that Nicolas Segebarth had recently joined the EC DG RTD Unit C4 Healthy Oceans and Seas and would attend the full meeting.

2. Updates from DG MARE (Iain Shepherd/Zoi Konstantinou)

• Marine Knowledge Expert Group

Zoi Konstantinou (EC, DG MARE) updated the EMODnet Steering Committee about the 3^rd Marine Knowledge Expert Group (MKEG) meeting of the European Commission in May 2019, noting that MKEG experts representing a variety of EMODnet data providers and user groups had provided concrete feedback and recommendations, to be published in a report in the coming weeks. The EMODnet Secretariat had participated in the 3^rd MKEG meeting, providing Secretariat support to the meeting facilitation and reporting.

• Priorities for EMODnet in Phase IV: See slide “Future priorities”

Zoi Konstantinou (EC, DG MARE) outlined DG MARE priorities for EMODnet going forward include prioritizing issues per portal, with improvements/optimization that would be communicated through Quarterly Reports. EMODnet Coordinators would be asked to respond with a time-line for addressing these improvements through further development of their portal. This would be step-wise process, in preparation for the next call for tenders (2021) that would ask for a more common approach with further harmonization across EMODnet portals.

She also emphasized the collective work needed to communicate EMODnet as a brand and what it offers, explaining what EMODnet is, what it offers and the services it provides, how it works and user-friendly explanations of how to use the operational service. This includes communicating EMODnet to a wider audience in a non-technical way.

Jan-Bart Calewaert acknowledged this need. EMODnet is still not very well known in some communities. In other communities, where the brand is known, it is not really known how EMODnet actually work and what is provided. He then invited Coordinators to continue to increase their communication activities and increase their role as Ambassadors of EMODnet as it is a collective responsibility.

3. Updates from EASME (Lucie Pautet/Juan-Carlos Fernandez Gomez)

Juan-Carlos Fernandez Gomez presented an update of EMODnet lots, confirming that five EMODnet contracts had been signed to date, with four more expected to be signed in the coming days or weeks (Subject to EASME validating evidences). The duration of all new EMODnet projects was two years. He added the UK situation and contingency measures for Brexit were still not confirmed, but in principle contracts already signed should run without problems. He also noted the new leading partner for Seabed Habitats is IFREMER instead of JNCC. The total funding for the two coming years 2019-2021 across the EMODnet network is 40 Million Euro.

It was noted the number of EMODnet organisations in the wider network had reached 150 organizations with the six Checkpoint projects, and although these were no longer active, the number remained close to 150 organizations taking into account the EMODnet Associated Partners (19 members at the start of September 2019).

In terms of EASME staff dealing with EMODnet contracts, he confirmed the new Head of Unit for EMFF at EASME is Vincent Favrel (responsible for signing the contracts). He also introduced a new project adviser, Lucie Pautet, replacing Anja and Greta, with Lucie being responsible for Seabed Habitats, Physics, Biology, Human Activities and Juan-Carlos for the other three portals of Bathymetry, Chemistry, Geology.

4. Status update of list of actions from previous meetings (Secretariat & all)

10^th SC meeting action updates

Jan-Bart Calewaert ran through the actions from the previous (10^th) Steering Committee meeting, with updates on activities. Actions relevant to the Technical Working Group (TWG) were briefly mentioned, for more in-depth discussion at the TWG.

Action 1: EMODnet Associated Partnership (AP) promotes the philosophy for data sharing and use. It was noted EMODnet could consider how best to involve the EMODnet APs optimally in future EMODnet events (e.g. Jamboree), without bombarding them. EMODnet benefits from the collective knowledge of the Associated Partners but it needs to be a win-win relationship that accelerates the partnership of others, with the example of Saildrone as a good recent example where data were already flowing to EMODnet Physics, despite only joining the AP scheme in Spring 2019. See agenda item 8c.

Action 2: EMODnet data store (discussed at TWG).

Action 3 and 19: Query tool (discussed in agenda item 17; VLIZ in TWG).

Action 4: EMODnet-MSFD: There are plans to link EMODnet more with regional actors, including operational EuroGOOS, Regional Ocean Observing Systems (ROOSes), CMEMS and RSCs. Some dialogue had taken place at the EOOS Conference (November, 2018) and specific further meetings between regional actors had been postponed until 2020.

Action 5: EMODnet co-organized a workshop with EMB and Campus de la Mer, Brest, on Big Data at European Maritime Day 16-17 May 2019 in Lisbon, and this had been achieved.

Action 6: Data flow – this would be taken up in the discussions on future EMODnet workplan activity for Work Package 4 on EOOS, building on the work already done by EMODnet and EMB.

Actions 7-8: done.

Action 9: EMODnet progress indicators: These had undergone a long process in development. Now it was timely to critically assess them in terms of indicators to keep going forward and how to best reorganise these and automate the monitoring as much as possible, to reduce time resources to process and report/make more efficient. See Agenda Item 12.

Action 16: EMODnet central portal intranet: The EMODnet Secretariat raised that these are not used very often and asked the SC if this was considered a useful platform going forward, including the functionalities that would be most used, such as document exchange, project management tools, calendar. Ongoing feedback was invited from the Coordinators and SC.

Action 17: Open Sea Lab, 4-6 September 2019, Gent, Belgium: R tutorials for all portals now available.

Action 21: EMODnet Terms and Conditions of Use. See Agenda Item 7. It was also raised that related to this, EMODnet SC would need to further discuss data policies for each portal and find ways to be most efficient. In addition, EMODnet use cases were currently on central portal, any portal-specific ones could be uploaded to the central portal or embed use cases for portal.

5. Updates from the Secretariat (Secretariat)

• EMODnet activities (OSLII), events and calendar 2020

EGU 2019 in April 2019 in Vienna was noted to be a useful event with EMODnet Geology present with a booth and EMODnet Secretariat input.

The upcoming Open Sea Lab 4-6 September, co-organized with CMEMS and ICES to use multiple data and web services, was confirmed to have 80 people attending. This meant potentially 15-20 teams would form to develop new applications and potential use cases for EMODnet. This would be further discussed in the EMODnet Technical Working Group on 3 October.

OceanObs2019 on 16-20 September 2019, Honolulu, Hawaii would be well represented by EMODnet. Coordinators and representatives of the EMODnet portals attending OceanObs19 are: Henry Vallius (EMODnet Geology); Patrick Gorringe (EMODnet Physics), Matteo Vinci (EMODnet Chemistry), Dick Schaap (EMODnet Data Ingestion, FAIR, ODIP), Paula Oset-Garcia (EMODnet central portal), Leen Vandepitte (EMODnet Biology), Kate Larkin (EMODnet Secretariat). EMODnet. The EMODnet community paper (published in Frontiers journal in July 2019) would be presented as a poster, together with a poster on the European Atlas of the Seas (EAS). DG MARE A1 Head of Unit Andreaa Strachinescu would also attend and present on the final day. The EMODnet Secretariat would collate input on EMODnet representation and send to DG MARE before the Conference.

Post-meeting note: Next OceanObs29 is planned in Qingdao, China (with potentially mid-term events leading up to 2029).

Patrick Gorringe noted he is the lead organizers for a National roadshow on EMODnet physics portal on 5 September 2019 in Sweden.

The EMODnet Secretariat noted it welcomes input on upcoming events from the EMODnet Coordinators and wider network to produce a collated list of upcoming events. The EMODnet Secretariat invited Coordinators to contact the EMODnet Secretariat to assist in the organization of national or other meetings to help promote EMODnet to wider data provider and user communities.

Participants noted a number of other upcoming events, listed in Annex I of this report.

Action 1: OceanObs2019 collate EMODnet inputs for DG MARE (Coordinators to send to KL to collate by 5 September, Achieved)

Action 2: Send general EMODnet powerpoint to SC (EMODnet Secretariat, 30 September)

Action 3: Coordinators to send information on upcoming meetings to the Secretariat, including internal meetings of EMODnet portals etc. (ongoing)

Action 4: Secretariat to follow up with DG MARE on funds and meeting location for Jamboree 2020 (EMODnet Secretariat, 31 October 2019)

Action 5: Submit an abstract for Oceanology International 2020 (EMODnet Secretariat, 3 October 2019)

• Interactions with Copernicus/CMEMS

The EMODnet Secretariat, European Commission and CMEMS representative Pierre-Yves Le Traon met on 17 April 2019 for the 3^rd coordination meeting between EMODnet and CMEMS.

An MoU was signed between CMEMS, EMODnet Secretariat and EMODnet Chemistry, with Dick Schaap (EMODnet Data Ingestion) adding his signature and completing the MoU at the meeting. This meant the MoU between the initiatives was not only at management and political level but increasingly at operational levels.

It was noted that the main objectives for Copernicus and EMODnet are the same: delivering free and open access data and data products (e.g. maps, model outputs). It was recognized that EMODnet has increased its interaction with Copernicus: e.g. EMODnet physics is already regularly in contact with, and supplying in situ physics data to, CMEMS in situ TAC, increased dialogue between CMEMS and EMODnet Chemistry, collaboration for Open Sea Lab II etc. This meant that EMODnet are invited now to more CMEMS related events.

Upcoming meetings related to CMEMS:

The EMODnet Secretariat and Coordinators would attend a CMEMS side event on 17 September at OceanObs’19, organized by CMEMS partners and involving DG GROW.

The EMODnet Secretariat (Pascal Derycke) will attend a Copernicus for the Aquaculture sector on 24-25 September 2019 in Athens.

EMODnet Chemistry and CMEMS meet on 3 October 2019 to develop a portfolio of EMODnet and CMEMS products for MSFD.

• Interactions between EMODnet and other initiatives: MSFD, MSP, ICES, RSC, EOOS

This was discussed in the 10^th SC meeting minute action updates, with more structured dialogue and meetings for MSFD and RSCs and EuroGOOS postponed until 2020. See agenda item 11 for EOOS.

6. Administrative and reporting issues & AOB (Secretariat & all)

It was noted that Quarterly reports would in future include recommendations for improvements. This would be further discussed in Agenda Item 12 on EMODnet Progress Monitoring and harmonization updates.

10:30-11:00 – Coffee Break

7. EMODnet Data Policy/Terms of Use (Secretariat)

It was recognized that EMODnet portals already provide information on data policy and terms of use, but this tends to be specific to the EMODnet portal. We need to work towards an overarching EMODnet Data Policy and Terms of Use for EMODnet data. The EMODnet Secretariat prepared a draft EMODnet Data Terms of Use and invited inputs from the EMODnet SC. The discussion would be continued at the TWG and feedback was also welcomed after the meeting. It was noted the document was specifically a Terms of Use, not a Data Policy and should be named accordingly.

Action 6: EMODnet Coordinators to send feedback on EMODnet Data Terms of Use to the EMODnet Secretariat (EMODnet Coordinators, 30 October)

8. External communication and external stakeholders (Secretariat & Trust-IT)

• Overview and key updates of communication materials, outputs and lessons learned

EMODnet’s communication strategy and outputs were outlined which included brochures, leaflets, posters, infographics and press releases and online articles (news articles, blogs) for new data products, key events. These were produced in collaboration with EMODnet Coordinators.

For social media it was noted that there was already good interaction with EMODnet Coordinators. The EMODnet Secretariat welcomed more input. It was also noted we need to also be more present on LinkedIn in addition to Twitter, while Facebook is not as useful for creating a professional community. The Secretariat welcomed feedback on target audiences and where EMODnet could reach out more. DG MARE stressed the importance of Communication to the widest audience possible. Upon releasing new releases of data and data products, we need to link data providers.

The European Atlas of the Seas (EAS), powered by EMODnet, was noted as an important communication tool to the wider general public.

The EMODnet Secretariat noted they are reviewing EMODnet Communication and would welcome further feedback to inform further development of EMODnet Communications in the coming two years.

• Communication protocol for major EMODnet data release

The EMODnet Secretariat noted that a communication protocol had been developed for new EMODnet datasets and products. This had been actioned for the latest three new EMODnet datasets/products: the EMODnet Human Activities vessel density maps, EMODnet Chemistry marine litter maps, and EMODnet Geology coastal migration map. This included preparing press releases ahead of time and in some cases like EMODnet Human Activities, organizing a webinar to invite potential users and interested stakeholders to learn more about the product, the methodology and interact directly with EMODnet Human Activities experts.

One reflection was that, as a service provider, EMODnet web servers need to be stable, particularly checking that services were in good working order before high interest times such as the release of a new dataset or data product.

The EMODnet Secretariat stressed that for new data and data products releases it is important that Coordinators inform the EMODnet Secretariat well in advance and the need to have material in advance to anticipate well in advance, and required a better communication. We also need EMODnet Coordinator input on upcoming releases to plan communication and get maximum impact.

• EMODnet Associated Partners (APs) and EMODnet for Business

The mutual benefits for APs is that they share data to EMODnet, while EMODnet provides outreach and communication of their brand (visibility on EMODnet website and link) as well as possible technical or other support.

The Secretariat aims to renew its communication with all Aps. Therefore, a more systematic reporting is necessary, listing for each AP the data they have offered and what exchanges (between EMODnet-APs) have been done. This is important to indicate the win-win properties of the AP-scheme.

Action 7: Systematically track our interactions with our Associated Partners. What have they done for us, and what actions have EMODnet undertaken (EMODnet Secretariat, 30 November 2019)

The Secretariat welcomed any ideas for attracting more AP including what more can we offer APs and how can we strengthen the partnership. The Secretariat feels that the APs are happy to have a flexible, non-binding partnership and they see value in the added visibility being part of the EMODnet AP scheme. EMODnet could have more interaction with APs to invite them to share their data and to invite them to use EMODnet data and data products and develop use cases to concretely show AP use. APs should be encouraged to offer and extend their data and services as open access. For example, the partnership with Saildrone is a win-win situation: they provide data to EMODnet Physics, while Saildrone is happy to have access to the EMODnet network. Similarly, Helzel is providing HF Radar data to EMODnet Physics.

The Secretariat communicated it had received a new application for an AP from Sofar, a company that provides cost-effective wave buoys that gather data e.g. physical parameters through marine sensors. The EMODnet Secretariat communicated the application to the EMODnet Steering Committee by email, inviting feedback by 19 September. The company would attend the OceanObs19 conference on 16-20 September 2019 which would be an opportunity for the EMODnet Secretariat and other EMODnet colleagues to meet with Sofar and potentially confirm their application for AP status.

It was stressed that EMODnet Data Ingestion is the first point of contact for APs wishing to share data and EMODnet Coordinators would then be contacted, depending on the relevant portal for the data in question. Then it could potentially move towards a more regular, automated data providers to EMODnet portals.

In the future, it was proposed that tailored information and training sessions could be given to APs or maritime sectors to encourage the use of EMODnet data and data products by industry and to encourage EMODnet APs to become more active EMODnet users and act as Ambassadors for EMODnet.

Action 8: Circulate Sofar EMODnet Associated Partner application to EMODnet Steering Committee, for feedback by 19 September (EMODnet Secretariat and Steering Committee, Achieved)

Post-meeting note: Following positive feedback from EMODnet Coordinators, Sofar were confirmed as EMODnet Associated Partner on 20 September on the final day of OceanObs’19

Action 9: Add a slide to EMODnet General presentation on EMODnet Associated Partner Scheme outlining the benefits and value of joining EMODnet A.P. scheme as a win-win for business and EMODnet (EMODnet Secretariat, 8 October 2019).

• Promotion of EMODnet by leading network partners

Jan-Bart Calewaert encouraged EMODnet Coordinators to be even more active as promoters of EMODnet at the national, European and even global level. The EMODnet Secretariat receive many invitations to attend meetings and where relevant the invitations would be further extended to EMODnet Coordinators to enable EMODnet as a network to attend more meetings of interest.

• Update of the EMODnet Portfolio

The EMODnet portfolio was launched in 2018 and updated in Summer 2019. Some hard copies were printed for Open Sea Lab II and for OceanObs2019.

9. EMODnet-4-MSFD Roundtable - updates from thematic lots

EMODnet Chemistry: Meetings with four Regional Sea Conventions (RSCs) and the MSFD-board of experts, including Niel Holdsworth (ICES) took place in November 2018 to discuss new data product releases for marine litter and nutrients. The products were updated after expert feedback on improvements and released in March 2019. There was also discussion on making the data more FAIR.

EMODnet Chemistry also participates to MSFD Marine Litter TG and contributes to the MSFD database on marine litter (link to JRC) and WG DIKE, TG Data. ICES is also contributing which helps the synergy between EMODnet, ICES and others. During the meetings, issues and weaknesses are identified and stakeholder feedback makes the data and metadata as useful as possible for MSFD. This also helps to create momentum to use EMODnet data and data products.

It was noted that targeted communication is important, e.g. with MSFD national experts. EMODnet also needs to work towards user-friendliness of EMODnet services. Public authorities and institutes should understand that EMODnet could and should be used to access data and data products to inform MSFD and MSPD assessments. However, data streams from national to regional (e.g. RSCs) to European level are complex and not always clear.

A new data product on contaminants is also on the way; EMODnet Chemistry will provide information to the EMODnet Secretariat.

Post-meeting note: The EMODnet Secretariat (Pascal Derycke) will attend a meeting on 2 October 2019 in Brussels to discuss EMODnet and CMEMS data and data products for MSFD

EMODnet Physics: ICES has become a partner which offers an opportunity to expand the EMODnet Physics network. EMODnet Physics now harvests the impulsive noise register for HELCOM and OSPAR, and can therefore now further develop these datasets with ICES and discuss how to expand them. EMODnet Physics also participates in TG Noise (with ICES) although it was noted that handling real-time noise data is not straightforward.

EMODnet Geology: EMODnet Geology indicated that sea floor integrity data may be relevant to MSFD. However, the quality/resolution of the data was noted to be not necessarily sufficient. EMODnet Geology considered itself more useful for MSP (discussed in Agenda item 10).

EMODnet Biology: EMODnet Biology organised a general meeting and stakeholder event in May 2019 with representatives from MSFD. There, the portal presented the Atlas of Marine Life containing products from an end-user point of view. Modelling traits (life stages etc.) were identified to be an important dataset. They noted that the RSCs don’t always use end-products, as they perform their own calculations. Hence, EMODnet Biology will try to create “building blocks” for them, to promote the use of EMODnet integrated datasets for MSFD assessment purposes.

EMODnet Seabed Habitats: EMODnet Seabed Habitats indicated that maps are classified according to MSFD habitats and are currently being used for MSFD. EMODnet participates in the MSFD TG HABITAT on seabed habitat mapping. EMODnet Seabed Habitats uses the ICES catalogue. Under the future contract, EMODnet Seabed Habitats will communicate with HELCOM to link EUNIS with their classification system.

The EMODnet Secretariat noted that a future meeting would be planned with RSCs, ROOSes, MSFD in Spring 2020 which would be timely after the start of the H2020 EUROSEAS project.

13:00-13:45 – Lunch Break

10. EMODnet-4-Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) (Corine Lochet, SHOM)

DG MARE have remit for Marine Knowledge (including EMODnet as flagship initiative) and Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP). It is timely to consider the momentum to better align between both developments and ensure EMODnet services and resources are more useful to MSP practitioners while MSP actors should be made aware of the benefit of using these resources and services as well as share their data and maps/layers for wider safe keeping and re-use by others. In this context, EMODnet could, for example, become a central repository for MSP national (and regional) plans. In terms of the Maritime Spatial Planning Directive (MSPD), the next national MSP plans need to be submitted to the EC by Member States on 21 March 2021.

Corine Lochet (SHOM) presented SHOM’s contribution towards implementation of the MSPD, including the production of data and input to national and regional MSP projects. Corine highlighted recommendations and lessons learned. She added that SHOM is involved in the MSP expert group representing EU hydrographic offices, with other members including representatives of ministries in charge of MSP implementation. SHOM and partners are involved in a number of other projects involving the implementation of MSP at trans-national levels where she noted EMODnet is particularly useful providing ocean data and data products at transboundary and regional level.

In summary, SHOM suggested that EMODnet could play a role in European Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) at various levels:

• At the level of coordination and knowledge exchange, EMODnet could
  • host/participate a Member States Expert Group (MSEG) meeting together with EMODnet or organise regular EMODnet-MSPD coordination meetings; and
  • Exchange information between key actors of both initiatives about needs, activities and developments and deliver high-level advice to the Member States as to how they can better align their marine knowledge and MSPD objectives.
• At the operational level – data resources for MSP
  • Raise awareness that EMODnet open source data and data products and services are already useful for MSP, particularly trans-boundary and regional-European level, including Human Activities (e.g. vessel transport lines, siting of blue economy industries e.g. aquaculture, wind farms), ecosystem management (bathymetry, biology) etc.;
  • host more MSP relevant data and integrate the national MSP plans (in layers and data flows) into the EMODnet infrastructure.
• At the operational level – data services for MSP
  • EMODnet could become the data repository/platform to a) ingest MSP project results and data to enrich existing EMODnet data and data products and; b) receive stakeholder feedback on other data and data products that may be required for MSP purposes that EMODnet does not yet offer but could seek to ingest data and develop data products and services for in the future;
  • EMODnet could consider offering guidance, tools and the infrastructure to enable Member States to upload MSP plans and the related data and layers for MSP. This could be a solution to help MSs to be compliant with INSPIRE also, whilst allowing MS to upload any modifications to their national MSP;
  • Provide online learning tools for data management, harmonisation and transformation of data. Since MSP plans are legal documents, approved by each Member State, responsibilities and acknowledgements to data providers/producers may different.
  • EMODnet portals could, open request, also be used/applied (mirrored) for use by other (e.g. MSP) initiatives/projects to populate data as is already done in some cases (e.g. EMODnet Physics provide the SPDI for the Southern Ocean Observing System, SOOS).

A discussion followed with following main points:

It was recognized that trans-national data is essential to follow an Ecosystem Based Approach. Despite this, cross-border projects still lack information across nations. Interoperability across nations also poses an issue, for example each nation has a different rule for the permitted distance between human activities at sea (e.g. fishing positioning of a wind farm area) and these rules are not yet standardized. In addition, maritime boundaries between countries are not always visualized in the same way (same baselines, different appearance).

DG MARE and EASME projects provide knowledge, advice and information to Member States on the development of their MSP plans. EMODnet should work at different fronts, including with MSP projects to channel relevant knowledge and expertise to the Members States and raise awareness of resources available to them.

Currently few countries have officially adopted a MSP plan and there is no obligation to provide layers for the MSP, only a plan. This makes it difficult to ingest the data into EMODnet to make available the different layers. DG MARE recognized there is currently no common format for presenting Maritime Spatial Plans. In the future these will also need to take into account decarbonisation which will see a larger percentage of national EEZs used for renewable energy platforms e.g. offshore wind farms. Future DG MARE-EASME calls could incentivize production of MSP map layers. This would also need communication at Member State level to ensure implementation.

The MSP Platform delivers documents, not data nor GIS layers etc. There is a need for establishing a long-term EU platform that is able to gather datasets thanks to harvesting processes and to host Member States MSP plans. EMODnet could serve this with data and data products since one barrier to establishing a common transboundary MSP is the sharing of national baseline spatial data which requires harmonized datasets and standards as well as stable web services (URL addresses and monitoring).

EMODnet has a lot of data and data products to offer to the MSP community. However SHOM identified one challenge is to raise awareness about EMODnet and marine data to MSP actors, particularly since relevant data for MSP are available across multiple EMODnet portals from Human Activities to Chemistry. Corine Lochet noted that MSP representatives require information and knowledge often in the form of maps, particularly trans-national maps. It was recommended that EMODnet should focus on making maps available for the different regional projects to use and to offer open source information and advice to Member States.

EMODnet Human Activities indicated that it would be willing to act as a repository for Member States Maritime Spatial Plans. This action would need coordinated communication to ensure nations to do this in a coherent way, as well as providing training to transform their plans into layers and data flows. Also, some harmonization is needed in different regions (e.g. terminology of military areas etc.). EMODnet Human Activities is currently looking at existing plans to see how these could be harmonized, to show the result to national authorities. In addition, they have attended MSPD formal meetings. EMODnet Human Activities and SHOM could work together to produce numerical maps with data. EMODnet HA could expand its remit in agreement with DGMARE to provide a useful MSP service, for instance ready for the next target of MSP plans by 2021.

EMODnet Geology: Individual partners of EMODnet Geology are involved in MSP at the national level. However, the EMODnet data and data products available are not typically used for the MSP process as the maps are often harmonized across the whole of Europe and some detail and resolution is lost. At a regional level EMODnet Geology data may be useful, but trans-national MSP planning is not straightforward.

EMODnet seabed habitat maps and various data and data products from EMODnet Chemistry, e.g. nutrient maps for targeted areas, were also considered as useful.

It was agreed that the MSEG MSP is a key group for EMODnet to interact with. Key contacts are from EMODnet Human Activities (Alessandro Pittito) and EASME and DG MARE. EASME also highlighted a workshop linked to MSP regional projects, 3 October 2019 where there would be an exchange on outputs of projects. EMODnet Human Activities would be represented by partner CETMAR, together with three members of the EMODnet Secretariat and representatives from EASME and DG MARE.

Action 10: Invite EMODnet Coordinators to attend EASME workshop to ensure Human Activities and DG MARE/EASME more permanent representation to the MSP expert group, and larger representation to the EASME workshop in early October on MSP to enhance communication and dialogue (EMODnet Secretariat, 27 September 2019, Achieved).

Action 11: EMODnet Secretariat to follow-up with Thematic Coordinators to ensure that the SHOM document/recommendations are taken into account (EMODnet Secretariat, 30 November 2019).

11. EMODnet for European ocean observing

• EOOS Conference and Call to Action

Kate Larkin (EMODnet Secretariat) explained the activities undertaken for EMODnet WP4 on European ocean observing, part of the EMODnet workplan since 2017. The EMODnet Sea-basin Checkpoints and summary report, published in November 2018, demonstrated how the ocean observing system and marine data services can be stress-checked and contribute key information on gaps and requirements to inform ocean observing system design.

DG MARE explained that EMODnet had focused on the data side: unlocking data, building on what already existed. Once EMODnet became operational, in 2015, it realised it has to connect more with what happens upstream and downstream to show users want can be done with the data while at the same time working closer with the data providers to improve efficiency. Additionally, by making more products, EMODnet had identified where there are important data gaps. EMODnet is leading the coordination of marine data management and services in Europe, with the most diverse, data rich and integrated data and data products, whilst also connecting to the data producers. EMODnet can now build on this to further strengthen coordination across the value chain, including to users and wider society.

The EOOS Conference was a success with over 300 people registered with participants spanning the research, policy and industry sectors and with 6 EC DGs attending (DG MARE, RTD, GROW, ENV, CLIMA and JRC). The EMODnet Secretariat together with DG MARE, the Secretariats of EuroGOOS and EMB and the EOOS Advisory Committee of wider stakeholders, set up in January 2018, prepared a Call to Action, released on the last day of the Conference. A key message during the EOOS Conference was that further dialogue, partnerships and connecting communities was essential and the EOOS Conference had gone a long way towards achieving this.

As a follow-up action, the EMODnet Secretariat, with input from the European Marine Board, tracked the uptake of the Call to Action, reported in meeting documents for agenda item 11. This included website metrics to assess the page views, visitor behaviour and downloads on websites containing EOOS information. This included the EOOS Conference website, the EMODnet central portal, the EC DG MARE Maritime Forum and the European Marine Board website. Twitter analysis was also undertaken, with a focus on #eoosconference2018 and #eoosconference18.

• Assessment of coordination of ocean observing and monitoring

In addition, a scoping activity was undertaken by the European Marine Board (EMB) in framework of enhancing a structured dialogue with EOOS partners. EMB, with input from the EMODnet Secretariat designed and sent out a survey on national coordination of ocean observing and marine monitoring resulting in a report (see meeting documents agenda item 11). The response rate however was low with only 19 responses and this was recognized as particularly low compared to the mailing list reach of >700 people. DG MARE noted that results even from such a relatively small-scale scoping activity were valuable as it identified the lack of coordination existing at national level between different bodies (e.g. fisheries and hydrographic organisations).

• Future assessment of coordination of data collection, management and data flow at national, regional and European levels (Secretariat)

According to DG MARE, the national level of coordination in both ocean observing, monitoring and data management is still somewhat unclear. The scoping work conducted by EMB could be further developed into a more systematic assessment of national coordination of ocean observing and marine monitoring, with more detail per country of the processes and the links (or lack of links) in coordination between different monitoring programmes. In parallel, the Secretariat intends to look at the coordination of marine data management and sharing at the national level. This may help to identify ways to improve coordination between different data initiatives at national level. For example, Norway already has a project to link up the scattered marine data repositories and make these accessible via a central gateway, a national mini-EMODnet if you like.

The EMODnet portals each have a different data flow, and although at a portal level these are known, this has not been reported systematically. The EMODnet paper for OceanObs19 already shows some of the data flows and key initiatives and this could be built upon to do a systematic review/survey to figure out, and to acknowledge, the diverse data providers, the coordination at different levels. This would also help to identify optimal data flows.

Sara Garavelli suggested that the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Secretariat have some funding for co-creation opportunities to run studies related to landscaping. This could potentially be relevant for the future EOOS studies on assessing the national data coordination landscape study.

Jan-Bart Calewaert added that the EOOS Advisory Committee, set up by EMODnet in 2018 to bring wider stakeholders (e.g. RSCs, Hydrographic offices, ICES) into the discussion had now been adopted by the EOOS governance (currently coordinated by EMB and EuroGOOS) as a longer-term Advisory Committee and the EMODnet Secretariat had been invited to be both on the EOOS Steering Group and its Advisory Committee going forward.

12. EMODnet Progress Monitoring and harmonization updates (Secretariat & Trust IT)

• Reassessment of the Progress indicators (Secretariat)

Nathalie Tonné (EMODnet Secretariat) presented an overview of the progress monitoring, including proposed updates from September 2019 onwards. Updates and discussion points are summarized below:

Quarterly reports: In the future, EMODnet portals will be required to report on the status and the timeline to address specific high priority issues/bottlenecks that have to be addressed and/or improvements that should be done by the individual portal (feedback from users, MKEG etc.) on harmonization, user-friendliness. There will be a new section on identified issues in the new quarterly reports to include updates on the status and actions taken with regards to the identified priority actions.

New progress/monitoring indicators: Some indicators will be combined to make reporting more efficient. Some indicators will only be reported on in the interim/final report. Indicators regarding user statistics and IT services will become automated and presented in a more visual way.

Interim and Final report: The interim report will report on the first year; the final report will cover the full contracting period.

The JIRA system in place will be mandatory to flag issues raised, follow up and report/monitor progress towards solving them.

EMODnet central portal: It was proposed in the future to monitor the web services (coming from the central web viewer) using GEONODE.

It was agreed to move towards harmonization of the name of data products in the web services as EMODnet data products e.g. EMODnet Bathymetry Digital Terrain Model.

13. External projects

Blue-Cloud: 6 Million Euro to start October/November 2019, 30 Months: This pilot project aims at building a vision (including technical demonstrations) for the Blue-Cloud as a key component of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). It aims to connect marine federated infrastructures bringing in key components of EMODnet and linking among others with CMEMS (through Mercator-Ocean) and FAO (link to Food Cloud). The project will contribute to the EOSC long-term development: building synergies and enhancing interoperability between existing infrastructures. The project will produce common products relying on multiple data services and products, with the aim to show how interoperability and bringing together many web services and products increases the impact. It will demonstrate organisations/initiatives can have a bigger impact when working together.

EMODnet data and products/services will be used in the Blue Cloud, and therefore gain more visibility in EOSC and wider scientific domains. Synergies and collaboration between EMODnet and Copernicus will be strengthened. Dick Schaap will be the Technical Coordinator.

DG RTD noted it will follow this project with interest and has high expectations.

Post-meeting note: The H2020 Blue Cloud project will hold its kick-off meeting on 2-4 October 2019 in Pisa, Italy. The EMODnet Secretariat (as partner Seascape Belgium) will attend, together with Trust-IT (H2020 Blue Cloud Coordinators) and others from the EMODnet Steering Committee and wider network.

SeaDataCloud – SeaDataNet focus

The SeaDataNet engine is providing data to EMODnet which adds value to the data among others by providing map visualization and developing data products. A new CDI Service Architecture (i.e. download manager) will be implemented; the set-up is planned for end September 2019. The objective is to replicate local data and maintain in the cloud as a buffer to avoid delays in the delivery of data and allow datasets from different data centres to be combined in single downloads. In the project they are now focusing on format control; in the future they will look at content quality.

The focus will be on FAIR data, and moving towards machine-2-machine retrievable services. Users want more metadata, especially on quality control, details on instruments/data collection, links to projects or data collectors, and links to standard data processing methods. This also contributes to the IODE Best Practices repository. The project will work with ENVRI-FAIR and others and create a new Graphical User Interface (GUI) which is faster, easier and more up-to-date. The Marine ID will be implemented for customized services. Daily data management is done at national level, standardisation at European level, while coordination is EU funding.

ODIP: Brings together regional and global e-infrastructures e.g. Europe, Australia (AODN), US (NCEI) and internationally with IODE/ ODIP. The project works towards a common global framework for marine data management, by having built upon existing systems.

ODIP I and II: The aim is to agree and implement common standards for marine data management. Several prototypes were built to bring data from several sources to global portals. A workshop was held every 9 months during which every country explained how they were tackling this process. On basis of differences the prototypes were built. In between the workshop sessions, planning and ideas were worked out on how to implement the prototype (i.e. agile working approach). A number of the elements from the prototypes were brought into SeaDataCloud. IODE were a partner in ODIP II and helped with dissemination (movies, …) and co-developed some common standards. These include standards for cruise summary reports (CSR). Sensor web enablement, digital VRE. Persistent identifiers, vocabularies, big data and model workflows. IODE could potentially be involved going forward as the main UN body for marine data.

EURO-SEAS: EC DG RTD representative Nikolas Segebarth explained that this project is in the negotiation stage, awaiting signature. It is coordinated by GEOMAR (Toste Tanhua) with 50 partners, including EuroGOOS and GOOS and with EMODnet partners OGS and Ifremer, amongst others. The project is >12 Million Euro and will last 50 months, starting in late Autumn October/November 2019. Data from the project will be available for transfer to EMODnet and CMEMS.

iAtlantic: Integrated Assessment of Atlantic marine ecosystems in space and time. www.iatlantic.eu iAtlantic is a H2020 BG8 All Atlantic project that started in June 2019 for 48 months with a budget of 10.6 Million Euro. It involves 33 partners from across Europe, USA, Canada, South Africa, Brazil and Argentina.

The project is an extension and evolution of the H2020 Atlas (N Atlantic) project to a pan-Atlantic project. It aims to fill gaps in ocean measurements and understanding of marine ecosystems to inform integrated assessments and marine management. It also aims to make the research data more visible and standardised so that it can be ingested into EMODnet. EMODnet is developing an open source web mapping application onto which geospatial data, GRID products and map layers can be uploaded. This gives visibility to the project data and has the advantage that the platform is INSPIRE compliant and compatible with EMODnet, making longer-term storage in EMODnet much more simple. The data repository Pangaea are a partner in the project offering an opportunity to look at the EMODnet portals and assess what percentage of the data unlocked by EMODnet are coming from Pangaea and to optimize data flows. For instance is there is an automatic harvesting system/protocol, does it automatically mean that it is used and that it flows to EMODnet? What percentage of the data, that you unlock, is coming from Pangaea? We need to understand these mechanisms, to see if we can improve them. For instance Pangaea has already contributed bathymetry data (from German vessel data) to EMODnet Bathymetry and EMODnet Physics has had interactions with Pangaea to have access to all Southern Ocean CTD profiles and data for the SOOS portal (metadata requires a lot of standardization).

EMODnet Biology noted that it has registered in FAIRsharing.org to log EMODnet Biology as an open source repositories to promote data sharing – they invited other portals to do the same: https://fairsharing.org/

Action 12: Invitation to register all EMODnet portals in FAIRsharing.org (EMODnet Secretariat, 31 October 2019)

14. EMODnet for Global (Secretariat & all)

All EMODnet portals gave an overview of their current and future activities for global users (see pdf with collated slides), building on their last EMODnet contracts.

A potential future side event at the IOC Assembly 2020 was proposed that will be followed up by the EMODnet Secretariat and EMODnet Physics, with other interested Coordinators. In June 2020, a meeting will be organised on the Ocean Decade of Science – it is recommended that EMODnet participates. It was also noted that the upcoming Open Sea Lab II included international interest, e.g. from MIT, U.S.

EMODnet Bathymetry: EMODnet Bathymetry includes worldwide data and metadata sources, produced by European organizations. EMODnet Bathymetry also contributes to international initiatives, providing bathymetric products for GEBCO and associated Seabed 2030 initiative (MoU in progress).

EMODnet Chemistry: EMODnet Chemistry has data providers from a pan-European network of which 87% are European but there are also providers outside European waters. Products are for European seas but relevant for global stakeholders. EMODnet Chemistry fully adopts the SeaDataNet infrastructure. In the OceanObs’19 conference, there will be a session on “Toward a global observing system for marine debris”.

EMODnet Physics: EMODnet Physics has multiple ongoing international interactions, among others the US (IOOS, NOAA, SOOS), Australia (IMOS) and Asia (ODIN WESTPAC). ODIN WESTPAC (Asia) are promoting standards, e.g. for HF Radar at international level. This experience shows that if Europe gets organized (platform approach, level) then other countries such as US and Australia and other regions want to link in.

EMODnet Biology: EMODnet Biology provides biodiversity and biological data to OBIS, through EurOBIS. In addition, about 3 million records from outside European waters including North Atlantic that come from CPR & ICES data. Thanks to the Darwin core standards there is a full interoperability with regions outside Europe (EurOBIS and OBIS). EMODnet Biology provides zooplankton data product to ICES and interact with WoRMS for the World Register of introduced (alien) marine species.

EMODnet Seabed Habitats: EMODnet Seabed Habitats is fully OGC compatible. European Horizon 2020 BG 08 projects are obliged to deliver data to EMODnet, hence the portal will also include pan-Atlantic habitat data. The portal is exploring ways to provide broad-scale seabed maps to non-EU countries e.g. China. In the future EMODnet seabed habitats could provide high seas products, including on species distribution modelling.

EMODnet Geology: There are no standards in Europe or globally but EMODnet Geology has good contacts with Australia and North America. The problem is to reclassify their data. In the next Phase/contract, the portal will work together with the Caspian Sea where EMODnet Geology has already assembled coastal migration data.

EMODnet Human Activities: There are no standards or regional EMODnet Human Activity coordination / web services outside Europe. The portal’s web services are OGC-compliant, and they have opened dialogue with the Black Sea Commission.

Action 13: Plan EMODnet contribution and potential side event at next IOC Assembly June-July 2020 (EMODnet Secretariat to liaise with Patrick Gorringe and other EMODnet Coordinators, 31 October 2019)

15. Looking forward: Jamboree 2020 (Secretariat & all)

Following a poll of the EMODnet Steering Committee for best dates, the week 21-25 September 2020 has been chosen for the next EMODnet Jamboree. This will be a full week event with portal meetings, Jamboree and an open stakeholder day.

END OF MEETING DAY 1

DAY 2, Tuesday 3 September 2019

MEETING STARTS AT 09:00 (Steering Committee and Technical Working Group joint meeting)

16. Short update from Data Ingestion (Dick Schaap /Sissi Iona)

Dick Schaap presented EMODnet data ingestion, explaining there are two phases in data ingestion:

• Phase 1: publish data “as is” and make sure metadata is there;
• Phase 2: further elaboration of the data and integration in relevant portals. Phase 2 (elaboration) requires high amount of human resources (data standardization, metadata check etc., liaising with data provider etc.).

A data Summary Service indicates which datasets have been published, e.g. datasets from windfarms biological monitoring are now in EMODnet Biology, being prepared and standardized for EMODnet.

By May 2019, 619 submissions were recorded, of which 506 were published in phase 1 (example: 45% were assigned to Physics; 24% to Chemistry, 14% to Bathymetry), 205 have been elaborated to phase 2. DOIs are assigned to enable a persistent identifier to be added to track the data and ensure its provenance and metadata are unique and traceable.

From now onwards, data ingestion reports should also include information from the thematic lots on how many data submissions they have ingested directly (not through Data Ingestion). The differences between the portals may be related to the scope, the size of the community and the efforts already undertaken by portals to engage the community to contribute data.

Efforts are needed on the communication and marketing of EMODnet Data Ingestion and to make data in the right format and promote standardization. For this process, EMODnet ambassadors from across the network are important.

Promising new interactions:

• Data ingestion from industry: The project coordinator together with EMODnet physics had a recent dialogue with Nord Stream (upcoming Baltic pipeline Nord Stream 2 Finnish and Swedish waters datasets) whose data cover physics, biology, seabed habitats.
• IOGP dialogue – they are already supporters of EMODnet as they are in the Marine Knowledge Expert Group (MKEG). There will be a dialogue through iAtlantic (on 20 September telemeeting for EMODnet Secretariat + iAtlantic + IOGP).
• Eurofleets+ transnational cruise data (see data management workflow example from Eurofleets+ (2020 on) in data ingestion presentation). Data coming from these research vessels has a moratorium of 2 years.

17. Short updates from the EMODnet thematic projects (Thematic project coordinators)

Each EMODnet portal provided a status update on items/activities dating from end of phase III – examples of new data and data products given include: Vessel Density Mapping for Human activities, Underwater noise for Physics, Marine litter for Chemistry, Atlas of Marine Life for Biology, etc. Portals also shared plans and longer-term ideas for new developments in the new contracts and interactions and collaborations across different EMODnet thematic projects.

EMODnet Human Activities - Alessandro Pititto (COGEA)

Most important updates:

• Vessel density composite monthly maps with new methodology developed by EMODnet;
• New dataset on EUMOFA data fish size: First sale of fish in European ports, with details on volume, size and presentation (live/gutted);
• Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are now broken down per category. Data remain the same, but they are easier to browse and have been updated up until the last year available;
• Dataset on Coastal nuclear power plants using marine water for cooling (interesting dataset even though not in the contract);
• KISORCA datasets on cables were removed from EMODnet based on request of the data provider.

Following dialogue with DG MARE, EMODnet Human Activities is assessing new data from the JRC on human activity for fisheries (e.g. fishing effort in FAO regions and also military zones).

Upon downloading data, users of Human Activity need to register their email address and the reason for downloading data form the portal. This information is useful for follow-up, e.g. for use cases. Several examples include C2Wind, Cathie Associates, Biosfera XXI.

EMODnet Seabed habitats - Mikaël Vasquez (Ifremer)

EUSeaMap 2019 uses the EUNIS and MSFD broad habitat classification. It is a compilation of 54 predictive habitat models >300,000 ground truthing habitat observation points.

During the last contracting period, EMODnet Seabed Habitats has developed new composite products and a new front-end map viewer. The new contract will continue with close interaction with EMODnet Geology e.g. the integrated seabed substrate map product. Other key areas include assessing the change in seabed habitats and the change e.g. in seagrass. Data have been ingested on Posidonia, but in the future this could look into changes in seagrass over time.

JNCC lead the communication and outreach and the communication of composite data products is done in close collaboration with the EMODnet Secretariat.

EMODnet Chemistry: The contract for EMODnet Chemistry ended on 6 March 2019, with a 2 months extension, as requested as an amendment. The final report was approved on 30 August 2019 so Phase III is completed. It was noted the new Phase budget is half and focuses on a limited number of partners and products.

Key products released in 2019 include marine litter maps, released on Sunday 24 March to mark the beach clean by DG MARE. Contaminants for full EU seas at broad scale, presented to MSFD are also available.

The recent MoU between Copernicus Marine and EMODnet Chemistry aims to further strengthen collaboration and EMODnet Chemistry would continue to have dialogue with CMEMS, e.g. at an upcoming meeting on 2 October in Brussels for a joint MSFD portfolio of EMODnet and CMEMS products. There had also been discussions with the EEA for monitoring data and citizen science data marine litter watch.

EMODnet Chemistry participate to Technical Group of Marine Litter. Litter data collected by Member states up to 2016 is already available and continued data gathering has been requested.

There has been the publication of EMODnet Chemistry guidelines in Ocean Best Practices (folder EMODnet). This increases the visibility and promotes EMODnet data and data products to global practitioners. There was a request to all thematic portals to continue adding to this Ocean Best Practice platform.

For the upcoming Jamboree in 2020, EMODnet Chemistry will look for opportunities for cross-cooperation e.g. strengthening the ongoing collaboration for EMODnet Chemistry with EMODnet Physics and Biology.

A remark was made on the EMODnet favicon (symbol on the web). Each portal uses its icon and the central portal uses the logo. Change the portals order to alphabetical order. Trust-IT will check and update the visual guidelines and work with VLIZ and EMODnet Coordinators to implement this change.

EMODnet Bathymetry - Thierry Schmitt (SHOM)

EMODnet Bathymetry provides a composite DTM (some areas to around 100m resolution), with satellite-derived data included for some coastal stretches Spain and Greece. Some data providers now provide DTMs in a resolution higher than the full DTM which can be seen on the portal. There are multiple origins of data providers, e.g. transit line, scientific studies, maritime security etc. which results in varying precision and processing. These are now better described in metadata and classification of attributes, e.g. date/time of survey/data collection. Helps assess quality of DTM (Quality index).

The Kick Off for the new contract was held in June 2019. The work will include new datasets (bathy full DTM and HR), improving global tidal modelling as well as updating full DTM CDI records (by data providers) to be more rich. Improvements will help users to assess the quality of the DTM at a local scale. A background bathymetric map is planned to be released in the coming months (early 2020, by next TWG).

EMODnet Physics - Patrick Gorringe (SMHI)

EMODnet Physics includes ICES as a new partner in new contract. The core partnership is: ETT, SMHI, MARIS IFREMER and ICES, which in combination represent a wide community of diverse data providers and sectors.

EMODnet Physics has added data from a new platform, mini loggers. This has generated an ingestion of a high volume of data: 340,187 CTDs with water temperature and salinity as downloadable parameters. A lot of people deploy CTDs and this is likely to increase in the future. For example, fishing gear mini-loggers on fishing nets provide CTD profiles, from North Sea and NW Atlantic. This enriches data from shelf seas and coastal areas. Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation is interested to share data, e.g. from WHOI. Another example is TMEDNET collecting data from mini-loggers by scuba divers (20 years; MPA areas in Med Sea; vertical profiles to 40m).

EMODnet Physics has many ongoing global collaborations such as SOOS, ODIN WESTPAC (Asia network), and IPET-MOIS (WMO expert team setting criteria for marine institutes to submit data to WMO, which can go to EMODnet Physics). EMODnet Physics can be a European contributor of real-time data to GTS to WMO.

Expanding data coverage is also made possible through increased interaction and partnership with marine and maritime industry. For instance EMODnet Associated Partner Saildrone produce unmanned surface vehicles. The first Atlantic mission datasets are already available in Physics. And they recently included data from the Antarctic circumpolar mission. There are also a wide array of other parameters which can go to different EMODnet lots. There is also increasing interest from the U.S. and other regions to mirror portals of interest. Mirror portal for EMODnet Physics is used in SOOS, JERICO. TWG could discuss if offering a portal feature for other groups to mirror could be discussed.

Miniboats deployed by students which collect data on waves, currents and temperature may not be the most reliable, but are useful for citizen science and education (school kit deployments), e.g. through the European Atlas of the Seas.

EMODnet Physics also reported increased interest by maritime industry e.g. Nord Stream 2 (diverse data – see slide with full list), although it was noted that Nord Stream 1 is a different company so may be a challenge there. Interactions were also ongoing with Van Oord (to provide dredging archive data from N Sea).

EMODnet Physics also reported ongoing dialogue and updates to Copernicus to provide in situ ocean physics data to the CMEMS in situ TAC via Coriolis. EMODnet physics was also moving towards making near real-time physics data available on the portal to see missions and ocean observing in action.

EMODnet Biology - Paula Oset García (Flanders Marine Institute, VLIZ)

EMODnet Biology reported that 170 new datasets 2017-2019 had been ingested into EMODnet Biology which included 4 million new occurrence records (see slides for data types).

Marine Biology Association (MBA) is a new UK OBIS node. Another development is the adoption of the Darwin Core (DwC) data scheme, a more complex data/metadata scheme which is more interoperable. EMODnet Biology provided an online course through ocean teacher to promote use of this standard approach.

The online query (QC) tool (IPT) checks compliancy of uploaded data (BioCheck) with standards as well as does a QC – outlier, duplicate etc. EMODnet Biology only harvests data once standardized and metadata complete for some parameters e.g. BODC vocabularies, metadata requirements.

The Atlas of Marine Life and products were presented during an end-user event. For each data product there is a story with a description of how it was generated and links to code on GitHub how it was done.

The download toolbox also has new functionalities added, to allow queries beyond only taxonomy. The user can also receive downloads in occurrence as well as additional parameters.

Work in progress includes release of a data availability tool which is already used internally, to be published in the coming months. This will include metadata information on the year of collection and/or harvesting by EMODnet, region, functional group. Products and information can be exported as graphs (.csv) and maps (images).

Next EMODnet Biology will issue a new data grants call. There will be an emphasis on direct data flows, i.e. to optimize and automate data flows. Identification of data gaps by data product creation was also considered important, including stakeholder feedback. For instance at a stakeholder meeting in May 2019 the RSCs requested the building of building blocks and intermediate products) that can be used for modelling, not gridded products. EMODnet Biology will also ensure further implementation of DwC and have an activity on data archaeology to identify species traits.

There was a question on offering a map viewer to projects or big initiatives in return for their data. Most biodiversity data comes from OBIS regional nodes. Rather than offering a map viewer in return for their data, EMODnet Biology instead offers processing of data in return.

EMODnet Geology - Henry Vallius (GTK)

In April 2019 EMODnet Geology released many new product updates. Coastal migration was launched at EGU, April 2019, which received good interest and website visitors. Submerged landscapes was a completely unique product for European coasts, released shortly after.

Interactions with other EMODnet portals: the geomorphology of EMODnet Geology is further strengthened by high resolution bathymetry data, interacting directly with EMODnet Bathymetry. The EMODnet Geology updated seabed substrates are also useful for EMODnet seabed habitats and there is further collaboration with data ingestion.

EMODnet Geology is currently in final reporting mode with the Kick-Off meeting for the new contract expected at the end of October 2019. In the new contract, coastal migration will be done for the Caspian Sea area. There are other products to review in the Caspian sea, and there are a lot of old Russian data (collected during the Soviet era) available which is still very relevant for geology.

For the new contract, EMODnet Geology maintains the same partnership except for Ukraine where the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine has taken over the role. Despite budget cuts, EMODnet Geology has retained the network as this is considered of utmost importance for marine geology.

Iain Shepherd (EC, DG MARE) made a general comment that documentation on use cases on the central portal could be improved. Use cases could include a thumbnail image to make them more visual, and to come alive with a quote or concrete testimony from user organizations on the added value and benefit of EMODnet data and data products.

Action 14: Trust IT will revisit the order of the portals to be alphabetical and update the visual guidelines and communicate to all portals to use their portal icon on their website (Trust-IT, 31 October 2019)

Action 15: All EMODnet lots to update the webpage with EMODnet portal icon before the next reporting period (EMODnet Coordinators, 31 December 2019)

Action 16: Contact all portal Coordinators for testimonials and inputs to use cases. Check and update use cases (images, visualization, quotes) (EMODnet Secretariat, 31 October 2019)

10.45-11:15 – Coffee Break

18. Updates and progress since 4&5^thTechnical Working Group (Pascal Derycke)

• EMODnet as a service provider

Pascal Derycke confirmed that the last meeting (TWG5) was done remotely as some lots were in between contracts. During the 5^th virtual TWG some questions were sent around to the coordinators to discuss what it means for EMODnet to be a true service provider. To become a true service provide, EMODnet has to further transform its perspective to be even more user-centric and find more uses of the data and data products. A wealth of data is available but there is a need to reach users by providing fit for purpose services.

To drive progress, a number of actions were taken. In June 2019 a coordination meeting took place between the EMODnet Secretariat and VLIZ to streamline the tasks to improve the technical performance of the central portal and EMODnet as a whole. Weekly meetings were also held at DG MARE with EASME and EMODnet Secretariat to address issues and discuss plans of action. Monthly meetings with VLIZ will also be held starting September 2019, to develop the operational service. This are open for other lots to participate remotely upon request. A new impetus and dynamic to is proposed for the TWG to move from taking stock every 6 months. The mechanism involves weekly meetings with DG MARE (TWG feed into EMODnet Secretariat). Jan-Bart requested managers of TWG to attend the monthly technical coordination meetings with VLIZ through webex. This should result in better alignment of activities through dialogue and progress checking to implement new tools/services and increase Operationality.

The management tool in use by EMODnet for technical coordination is the JIRA which will become even more central to drive progress as well as to centralize/record all user feedback in one place to monitor/analyse the user requests. All coordinators have access and need to use it to make sure EMODnet is operational. The tool also integrates a helpdesk service and allows benchmark on regular basis to assess if the EMODnet SDI's are performing well. The TWG will need to decide what needs to be done to maintain minimum operational requirements for EMODnet, e.g. server performance and down-time. Monitoring, reporting, action plan.

Data providers are important: we need to acknowledge them, be able to check which organizations contribute datasets to EMODnet and to be able to search. We may need to design a future service for this with a central data base with EMODnet data providers - how can such a service be developed? E.g. Physics provide user statistics to data providers on their platform. This needs to be centralized in EMODnet for all portals. Dick Schaap suggested to use ATMO to tag the different data providers (SparQL endpoints).

Another development which will improve EMODnet as a user-service provider is the EMODnet data store. A proof-of-concept was presented at the 10^th Steering Committee meeting and also presented to MKEG in May 2019. Further updates are given at the TWG in the afternoon. The question is not why but how and what?

• GDPR

EASME requested that all EMODnet project verify their compliance with GDPR rules at the technical level. As EMODnet portals are dealing with personal data on behalf of the EU (EMODnet portals are under EC umbrella) they need to comply with regulations specific to EU constitutions (based on GDPR but more specifically). This is important for EMODnet to be operational. Products and data are being handled by EMODnet portals on behalf of the EC so must follow these EU services guidelines and regulation. New contracts have 12-15 references to guidelines and regulations. We needed to address EASME request in a short time. EASME central service will verify the responses of all portals and provide feedback and/or instructions for resolving issues if any.

For use of social media (Facebook) links by EMODnet portals: Facebook uses cookies in the Facebook link. Prevention of writing cookies by this JavaScript is possible: challenges of Facebook and GDPR can be overcome using an external javascript URL that doesn’t write any cookies.

• Hackathon package (survey on accessing EMODnet data)

Pascal Derycke introduced the Open Sea Lab II and the Hackathon package, which was developed by the EMODnet Secretariat, in collaboration with VLIZ and with input from CMEMS and ICES. It includes documentation on EMODnet web services and R scripts. This constitutes a great effort which can be re-used in the future.

Action 17: tweet about the OSL Hackathon package accessing open data, R and Python tutorials, web service catalogue (EMODnet Secretariat and VLIZ for EMODnet and Open Sea Lab twitter account, 5 September 2019, achieved)

As for the first OSL, a survey would collect feedback on the benefits of the Hackathon to stress-test the EMODnet services and receive user feedback on how easy it is to discover and download EMODnet data and products. This could be combined with MKEG feedback for future EMODnet developments.

19. Next Steering Committee Meeting: format, date and location (Secretariat & all)

Request for tele-meeting video meeting conference facilities.

The next SC meeting will take place in Spring 2020. A doodle will be circulated for the next meeting. Typically the Spring meeting is hosted by one of the EMODnet partners but Brussels is always a fall-back option. Possible locations include: U.Liege (Capri or Corsica), CETMAR or AZTI (San Sebastien or Vigo), HCMR Data Ingestion (Athens or Crete), OGS (Trieste).

Any other business

Annual Report 2018: The EMODnet Secretariat requested fast feedback from all Coordinators to the Annual Report 2018 where explanations on the metrics was needed e.g. graphs on the visit, downloads and percentage of increase in data made available.

Action 18: Circulate AR2018 graphical representation of web metrics, fast feedback from Coordinators requested by Monday 9 September (EMODnet Secretariat and Coordinators, 9 September 2019, achieved)

20. Wrap up and closing of the Meeting (Secretariat & all)

END OF MEETING