Description
Interest in the conservation and exploitation of seamounts and their associated biological communities has highlighted a need to improve understanding of seamount ecosystems and the threats they face, as well as considering the management of activities that take place around them. Survey data is usually dispersed in geographical locations and stored in heterogeneous formats, such as video, text documents, proprietary binary formats, spreadsheets, among others, making it a challenge to manage its life cycle and to provide dissemination means that enable its reuse by other stakeholders. Results of this project will provide new means to curate and access original datasets and a set of interoperable services to disseminate observation data, thus providing baseline information for management and sustainable use in the Portuguese marine environment, as well as to the development of the marine strategies for the continuous assessment and maintenance of the good environmental status (GES).
Summary of project results
Survey data is usually dispersed in geographical locations and stored in heterogeneous formats, such as video, text documents, proprietary binary formats, spreadsheets, among others, making it a challenge to manage its life cycle and to provide dissemination means that enable its reuse by other stakeholders. SeaBioData provides new means to acquire, organize and access original datasets and a set of interoperable services to disseminate observation data, thus providing baseline information for management and sustainable use of the marine environment. SeaBioData has produced a technological framework for the effective and efficient monitoring of particular ecosystems such as seamounts, providing adequate and timely information to stakeholders, from research teams to policy makers. It consists of a server-side infrastructure, a Web client and a mobile App. The server-side infrastructure consists of a repository for the context information, allowing the management of research teams, vessels, stations, procedures, samples (biotic and abiotic), etc. It also consists of a flexible and configurable repository for observations, in which researchers can define what are the procedures that will be followed in the context of a campaign and the outputs they produce. This structure determines the actual structure of the data and the dynamic generation of interfaces that researchers will use for data input. Data contained in both repositories are seamlessly managed by means of a Web Application that connects to the repositories through a Web service Application Programming Interface (API). The same API is used by a Mobile App (SeaBioTablet) making available a subset of functionalities needed by the researchers during a campaign (or in the lab) to record observations, samples and associated files. SeaBioData encompassing 2 systems (one for handling context data associated to surveys, the other to ingest and manage observation data), allowing the integration of data from two domains (physical and biological), along with survey information (including audiovisual components), exposing two web services APIs (survey information and observation data) which can be used by external systems (requires authentication) and delivering 2 added-value services ( fishing effort and identification of vulnerable marine ecosystem areas).
Summary of bilateral results