Press-release: Marine Board-ESF: Leading Experts on Data Collection and Data Policy attend the 1st Marine Board Forum "Marine Data Challenges: from Observation to Information" and related exhibition - 15 May 2008 Ostend, Belgium.
On the 15th of May 2008, the Marine Board brought together representatives of major European
marine organizations and projects to discuss the importance of marine data and observation collection, management and processing in the frame of the ongoing debate about the creation of the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODNET) and its links to various initiatives, such as ESONET, EMSO, MerSEA, ECOOP, Euro-ARGO, EuroSITES, SeaDataNet, etc.
"It is essential at this moment to address such a topic" said Mr. Lars Horn, the Chair of the Marine Board "especially as many European and national policy makers do not have a vision of the value and structure of systems such as EMODNET for which the European Commission will establish a
roadmap in 2008 and an action plan in 2009. " [click on title to read more]
The relevance of measurement and sampling at sea, and the need to
disseminate the results as widely and in as user-friendly a manner as
possible, cannot be overestimated. More services and products useful to
industry, the general public and policy makers, could, and should, be
extracted from databases. There are many applications of
data-management that relate to climate and weather, safety at sea and
along the coast, fisheries, offshore activities, management of the
seas, etc.
Currently responsibility for collecting data in Europe's seas and
oceans is shared between a fragmented patchwork of regional, national,
public and private organisations. Assembling this data into a coherent
framework is a fundamental first step in planning new economic
activities on the sea or monitoring ecosystem health. As a result many
valuable data are now inaccessible because of how, why and by whom they
were collected and how and where they are now held. These datasets need
to be unlocked and made easily accessible so that they can be used in
new ways,
The 1st Marine Board Forum coincides with the official Inauguration of the Marine Board's new
facilities in Ostend, Belgium, part of the lnnovocean site. The inauguration was held on 14 May
immediately prior to the Forum and related exhibition.
The lnnovocean site is becoming an expanding node of synergies housing
amongst others the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), UNESCO/IOC's
project office for International Oceanographic Data and Information
Exchange (IODE) and the secretariat of the European Fisheries and
Aquaculture Research Organisation (EFARO). This unique co-location of
marine science institutes and international organisations facilitates
interactions across different marine science fields, exchanges of
dedicated information and specific expertise and synergies along with
the development of joint activities at different levels (regional,
national, European and international).
IOC/IODE was represented by the Head of the IOC Project Office for
IODE (Peter Pissierssens) and he presented the paper "UNESCO/IOC's
project office for IODE". The presentation is available as a video clip
HERE . Presentations of all the speakers are available in video format .
More information on the Marine Board: http://www.esf.org/research-areas/marine-board.html
On 17 May the lnnovocean site will be open to the public at large from 10.00 to 18.00.
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Created on: Friday, 16 May 2008 17:23
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Last Updated on: Monday, 01 July 2013 12:20
