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Ireland’s Digital Ocean

Ireland

Abstract:

Ireland’s Digital Ocean is a portal to data which has been collected in and around Ireland’s maritime zone. The Integrated Digital Ocean is a platform to access a diverse range of services including online maps, data dashboards, data access, data search and publications. 

Sea Basin(s):
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Atlantic Ocean
Country:
Ireland
Application in MSP:
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Applied in an MSP process
Type of Issue:
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Data
Type of practice:
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Tools
Stage of MSP cycle:
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Analyse spatial aspects
Cross-border / trans-national aspect:
No
Coherence with other processes:
Habitats and Birds Directive
Marine Strategy Framework Directive
Water Framework Directive
Key words:
Geodata portal
Source / Links:

https://www.digitalocean.ie/

Questions this practice may help answer

  • What spatial data is available to support marine planning in Ireland?
  • How can real time marine observations assist in marine planning activities?

Implementation Context

The Marine Institute Act 1991 sets out among others the function of the Institute is to collect, maintain and disseminate information relating to marine matters.

The Marine Institute in Ireland under the umbrella of the Marine Data Centre via the Digital Ocean Platform concept brings together data collected by 11 different organisations where they can be accessed from one place in order to coherent picture of the maritime space in Ireland. The Digital Ocean has been proposed as a “one-stop-shop” of hosted online data services including descriptive metadata to find data, maps and graphs to view data; and services to download data. 

Aspects / Objectives 

  • Provide a map based interface to live marine observation data and static data regarding places of interest around the coastline
  • To integrate data from a variety of sources representing a large number of parameters, providing a “one-stop-shop” to obtain data relating to marine matters.

Method

Ireland’s Digital Ocean map interface has been developed based on a prototype which was produced for the 2015 Harnessing Our Ocean Wealth Conference. In order to provide a resilient extensible system with a low barrier to enter the platform has been built on Open Source technology. The platform incorporates data from incorporates data from Commissioners of Irish Lights; Environmental Protection Agency; Failte Ireland; Geological Survey of Ireland; INFOMAR; Irish Underwater Council; the Marine Institute; US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; SmartBay Ireland; Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland; and University College Cork

Main Outputs / Results

The main outputs of Ireland’s Digital Ocean Programme are the digital ocean online map interface and the Marine Institute Data Catalogue. These two key outputs along with other data which may be useful to marine planner can be accessed via the Marine Data Centre.

Figure 1: Ireland’s Digital Ocean online interactive tool

Transferability

This portal presents information relevant to marine planning in Ireland but may be of interest in terms of the approach to presenting data and enabling access.  

Responsible Entities

Marine Institute

Costs / Funding Source

European Maritime and Fisheries Fund
Marine Institute Digital Ocean Programme

Contact

datarequestsatmarine.ie (datarequests[at]marine[dot]ie)