Baltic Data Flows

The Baltic Data Flows project, funded by the EU Innovation and Networks Agency (INEA), will enhance the sharing and harmonisation of data on the marine environment originating from existing sea monitoring programmes. The project will increase the capacity of the competent national authorities for harmonising and sharing collected environmental monitoring data on the Baltic Sea by supporting the development of in‐house database platforms. The focus of the project is also to further develop and implement a system for harvesting environmental datasets from national sources to harmonised regional datasets in the context of existing HELCOM data collection activities. Furthermore, the project will  provide  tools  for  creating  and  disseminating  more  general  data  products  suitable  for communicating the status of the marine environment to the general public and decision‐makers by further developing existing  solutions such as  the HELCOM Map and Data Service and  the HELCOM Metadata catalogue.

Baltic Data Flows will improve the capacity building of the national environmental data hosting organisations and providers of the consortium, in terms of quality control and solutions to make harmonised environmental data available. Members of the consortium will build and enhance their ICT infrastructure to support better the data sharing process. In doing so, the FAIR principles will be followed (data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable).

Furthermore, data harvesting systems based on Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) will be developed with the aim to automatically integrate national datasets into a combined and harmonised regional dataset. As a result of the project, harmonised and quality assured pan-Baltic monitoring data that is usable for research purposes, environmental assessments, sustainable maritime spatial planning and blue growth will be made accessible.

Furthermore, Baltic Data Flows will provide tools for creating and disseminating more general data products suitable for communicating status of marine environment to the general public and decision-makers.

Project Partners

• HELCOM (FI)
• ICES (DK)
• LHEI (LV)
• SMHI (SE)
• Spatineo inc. (FI)
• Stockholm University (SE)
• SYKE (FI)