EMODnet: the largest free accessible marine database in Europe, ISMAR contribution

For many years, marine data collection and storage have been done by single research groups or institutes producing small and fragmented datasets not accessible to the rest of the scientific community. The European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) program, supported by the European Commission Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE), overcomes these limits and underpins the Marine Knowledge 2020 roadmap. EMODnet indeed represents a network of organisations from several European Countries working together in order to organize, harmonize and make marine data freely accessible into several interoperable portals (http://www.emodnet.eu/). The EMODnet program allowed to build up the largest European marine database that, besides making data available both to the public and private communities, will represent an opportunity to stimulate competition and innovation into established and emerging maritime sectors. In particular, for Italy, it may represent an opportunity to strengthen collaborations with other Mediterranean countries in the frame of research, energy, tourism and security sectors in the Tyrrhenian, Ionian, Adriatic Seas and Sicily Straits marine zones. Marine data and products uploaded in the EMODnet portals are organized in the following topics: Bathymetry, Geology, Biology, Chemistry, Seabed Habitats, Physics, Human Activities and Coastal Mapping. ISMAR participates in the current EMODnet 2 phase as full partner in the Bathymetry Lot and subcontractor in the Geology Lot. EMODnet Bathymetry aims at providing a single access point to bathymetric data, metadata and products for all the European Seas, originated from surveys and data collected and managed by a remarkable number of governmental and research organisations in Europe. EMODnet Geology aims at providing free access to geological data and metadata held by various organisations in Europe, namely the National Geological Surveys, compiled at a common scale of 1:250, 000. In the EMODnet Bathymetry Lot, ISMAR is the regional coordinator of the Central Mediterranean Digital Terrain Model, thus is in charge of the creation of the DTM (9-20°E/30-46°N) compiled from several different sources following a common QA/QC procedure. In the EMODnet Geology Lot, ISMAR is providing a harmonized sub-set of active faults in the Tyrrhenian and Ionian Seas for the Workpackage 6 - Events and Probabilities, led by ISPRA, which acts also as the Italian contact point for this lot. Furthermore, ISMAR is also providing the sea-bed substrate of the Adriatic Sea, delivered as an harmonized compilation of the eastern and western side of the basin inside the Workpackage 3. While the Bathymetry Lot has already reached a mature phase, with a 0.25 minute * 0.25 minute DTM available for download from the portal, the Geology Lot is still a work-in-progress and only some examples are available from the portal.