Preserving and sharing data of deposits sand along the Western Sardinian Shelf

A critical component of Maritime Spatial Planning is the establishment of well-curated, federated Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) to provide a means to preserve and share geospatial data while promoting attribution and acknowledgement of its use. Objective of the work is to create a geospatial database of geomorphology, seismic and sedimentology data of Western Sardinian (Italy) marine sector, to share them and to promote planning actions in relation to the management of submerged sand deposits situated in the continental shelf, which can be used for beach nourishment. The work was realized through the integration of data and information collected during several projects. The available data consist of morphobatimetric data (multibeam) associated with the morphoacustic data between -50 and -700 m and singlebeam surveys in low-depth coastal areas. Extensive coverage of high-resolution seismic profiles (Chirp 3.5 kHz) and hundreds of kilometres of sparker profiles were acquired along the continental shelf. Surface sediment sampling (Van Veen grab and box corer) and vibrocorer survey were performed. These data allowed the mapping, determination of the thickness and volumes of the submerged sand deposits and their sedimentological characterization. All data were organized by means of the software suite Geoinformation Enabling Toolkit StarterKit ® (GET-IT), developed by researchers of the National Research Council for RITMARE project. GET-IT facilitates the creation of distributed nodes of an interoperable SDI and enables unskilled researchers from various scientific domains to create their own Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard services for distributing geospatial data, observations and metadata of sensors and datasets. The products of the work are the creation of an information system of the sand reservoir along the Western Sardinian continental shelf through interoperable tools allowing the data storage in several levels of information, their sharing, and integrated management and analysis.