Adding waves of value to marine data
Marine waters in the EU host a wide range of commercial, scientific, and recreational activities. Knowledge about these waters is critical to understand ocean ecosystems, inform EU policy, and support the Blue Economy with marine knowledge that enables smart planning of marine space to maintain and expand the scope of these activities, whilst also conserving and restoring marine ecosystems.
This article was featured in Eurofish Magazine 1 2025.
EMODnet, or the European Marine Observation and Data Network, seeks to provide this information as high quality data and data products to multiple user groups, such as scientists, policymakers, and industry stakeholders, as well as the general public. An EU-funded initiative, namely the in situ marine data service of the EC Directorate-General Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (EC DG MARE), funded by the European Maritime Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund, EMODnet was established in 2009 to streamline and harmonise marine data collection, processing, and distribution. It addresses the challenges associated with accessing information on Europe’s vast and diverse marine environments by creating a centralised platform where data is free, accessible, and interoperable. The network of more than 120 partners integrates data from numerous sources, including research institutions, government agencies, and commercial entities, thereby significantly enhancing the ability to monitor, assess, and manage the marine environment and its resources.
Diverse data and information, organised into seven themes
The EMODnet service offers data and data products across seven broad themes covering diverse aspects of the marine environment, including bathymetry, geology, biology, chemistry, physics, seabed habitats, and human activities (at sea). A user can navigate across all thematics and the hundreds of parameters on offer via a common map viewer and central metadata catalogue, allowing users to explore data layers and products, e.g., composite maps, and download data in standard formats. The bathymetry theme, for example, provides high-resolution maps of seabed topography, supporting maritime spatial planning, the siting of offshore platforms and more, while the biology theme offers data on species occurrence and distribution from microbes and phytoplankton to marine mammals, vital marine biodiversity information for research and innovation, environmental policy and conservation efforts.
Whilst the core mandate of EMODnet is European regional seas, some thematics offer a global coverage of parameters. For ocean physics, this includes surface water temperature – including near real-time delivery – and at European-scale a wide range of physical parameters, including underwater noise and river runoff data as part of EMODnet’s expanding offer for the coastal zone and land-sea interface. And the EMODnet Human activities[1] thematic covers subjects ranging from aggregate extraction to wind farms and vessel density. Another recent development is the availability of national marine spatial plans in geospatial formats allowing users to see different layers of activity in the plan. Conversely, countries in the process of developing their marine spatial plans can draw on EMODnet data, for example, on areas that are more vulnerable to storm surges or coastal erosion, to make their plans more climate smart.
In an interview with Eurofish Magazine, Dr Kate Larkin, head of the EMODnet secretariat, says that EMODnet had evolved significantly over the last 15 years from a bottom-up scientific network to the fully operational service accessed by >120,000 users a year. “EMODnet is a unique marine knowledge asset in Europe, offering the most diverse offer of data and data products from the marine environment and human activities at sea. This interdisciplinary approach combing marine environment and human activities data is crucial for users, to support holistic assessments of the status of Europe’s regional seas, and to enable evidence-based decision-making, including for the management of marine space”. Explaining the data pipeline to EMODnet, she says, EMODnet is fully reliant on marine data collected by Europe’s Ocean observation and marine monitoring community. Here we are talking about in situ data, collected via samplers, sensors and platforms in/close to the water. Many of these data are taken by Member States for national, regional and European obligations and requirements, yet the data can also be commercial data and even data from citizen science initiatives. She notes that EMODnet adds value by firstly assembling these disparate ocean observations and primary data and then working with Research Infrastructures and Data infrastructures e.g., SeaDataNet, to standardise, harmonise and integrate these data into Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) pan-European data layers, with data and accompanying metadata harmonised to EU and international standards.
Bringing the EU closer together through data sharing
Among EMODnet’s significant achievements is fostering cross-border collaboration and data sharing, which is essential given that marine ecosystems transcend national boundaries. By offering a standardised framework for data collection and sharing, EMODnet helps to reduce duplication of efforts and increase efficiency across member states. Data from hundreds of different providers across the EU is meaningless unless it can then be made interoperable. EMODnet plays a critical role here by harmonising the data and metadata to European (and international) standards, including those stemming from the INSPIRE directive. For a user this means that they can look at a data set, for example, marine mammal populations in Europe, containing data from different sources, and can download the data as a single pan-European layer or can go in deeper to download individual data sets. Applying these standards to the metadata means that all EMODnet data is offered with a minimum set of comparable information, a development that also enables human to machine and machine to machine searches. This in turn means that EMODnet data is now being automatically harvested by global data and metadata services, e.g., the Ocean Data Information System (ODIS), a key initiative of IOC-UNESCO and the UN Ocean Decade. Making the data interoperable enables flagship data products to be produced, for example, the EUSeaMap broad-scale seabed habitat map for Europe. This is made possible by integrating interoperable multidisciplinary data from the seafloor, namely the substrate, seafloor bathymetry (depth and elevation), seafloor biodiversity, bottom water currents, etc. This assembly and standardisation process also enables the map to have predictive capability, whereby the seabed habitat from one area can be used to predict the seafloor biodiversity in another area that has not been fully mapped, if the bathymetric and substrate characteristics are similar. This product is particularly relevant for ocean sustainability, conservation and restoration efforts, and is employed, for example, by Regional Sea Conventions in regional sea assessments.
A user-driven service
EMODnet is used by a large and expanding user community, serving multiple user groups, such as scientists, policymakers, and industry stakeholders, by providing the information necessary for research, policy development, and sustainable business practices. It also support EU policies and strategies, such as the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and the Maritime Spatial Planning Directive (MSPD), and the broader European Green Deal and EU Climate Action targets. Whilst Member States collect data as part of their regulatory monitoring obligations, EMODnet can help unlock these data so they can be then used for multiple purposes. Regarding maritime spatial planning (MSP), EMODnet is involved in the European technical group for MSP, facilitating close dialogue with Member States but also with regional sea conventions and European policy makers. In this way, EMODnet experts have directly contributed to defining MSP models and methodologies that can be used by countries to produce their maritime spatial plans in more harmonised formats.
Increasing the number of users of the service calls for outreach work to create awareness as well as to understand the reasons why stakeholder may not yet use the portal. This could be due to a lack of familiarity, but equally could be that the data are not offered in the right format or resolution for a specific use. As an EC service, EMODnet is restricted in how it can track users. The secretariat and wider partnership therefore invest in targeted dialogues with intermediate and end-users from small-medium enterprise companies building marine and maritime applications to national authorities, Regional Sea Conventions and European projects. EMODnet offers an extensive database of use cases that demonstrate the concrete use of EMODnet data and data products to drive understanding, research and innovation, and underpin marine management and smart, sustainable operations at sea. To achieve this, the secretariat also collaborates closely with EMODnet experts to organise events, which are often sector specific. These help identify key marine data requirements by specific data groups, and to explore data sharing opportunities. To date, this has included dedicated workshops on EMODnet marine data for Aquaculture which were organised in 2020-2021 together with the European Aquaculture Technology Platform (EATiP), among others, and events between 2022-2024 with the offshore renewable energy, coastal tourism, ports, marinas, and recreational boating sectors. Dr Larkin notes that the increased presence of public and private data on EMODnet will also in time further incentivise the private sector to contribute as well, especially if private players can see that their data is harmonised and made interoperable for free by EMODnet, so they receive FAIR data back and contribute to advancing European marine knowledge. Other user focused events include hackathons where users test the services for specific purposes to produce societal applications. Feedback obtained from events and from the online portal helpdesk are used to inform priorities for future improvements of the service.
New technological developments power the European Digital Twin Ocean
In recent years, EMODnet has embraced advances in technology to transform its data services as a key contribution to the digital transition. As a result, since January 2023, EMODnet offers a centralised portal, backed up by a fully searchable central metadata catalogue. This has been a game-changer for the user, with a central map viewer for discovery and visualisation and access to FAIR data and metadata via the extensive catalogue. In addition, this technical leap has been critical to enable EMODnet’s key role in the European Digital Twin Ocean (EU DTO). Together with Copernicus Marine Service, EMODnet powers a lake of marine environmental and human activities data as part of the EDITO-Infra initiative that underpins an ever-expanding cloud-based toolbox that is set to further transform big data analysis, scenario building and decision-making in the marine domain. And, into the future, machine learning (ML) and other artificial intelligence (AI) tools could be applied, not only to the data analysis, but to also the data and metadata management and service provision “With developments in ML and AI it is possible to envisage applications that not only transform data analyses, but also the foundational data services themselves. For instance, ML could be used to update the metadata catalogue or tag the catalogue with specific information that make the data even more searchable e.g., for Blue Economy sectors, MSFD Descriptors, etc. ” All in all, with its comprehensive, freely accessible marine data resources, EMODnet is setting a standard for data-driven, collaborative marine data services management in Europe and beyond. And, with a new EMODnet Vision to 2035 in production, EMODnet’s community will set out priorities for EMODnet’s service evolution over the next decade, coming soon in spring 2025. For more information visit emodnet.eu.
[1] Eurofish International Organisation, the publisher of the Eurofish Magazine, is a partner in EMODnet Human Activities