http:// medin partners meeting sept 2010 dassh – the archive for marine species and habitats dan...

http://www.dassh.ac.uk MEDIN Partners Meeting Sept 2010

DASSH – The Archive for Marine Species and Habitats

Dan LearDASSH Project Co-ordinator

Marine Biological Association of the UK


What is DASSH?

• The UK archive for marine species and habitats data

• Based at the Marine Biological Association, Plymouth

• Launched 2005 • Accredited MEDIN Biodiversity

Data Archive Centre (DAC)• Currently ~800,000 records• Provides data to the NBN, GBIF

and OBIS• Provides metadata to MEDIN portal


What does DASSH do?

DASSH:• provides a DAC to safeguard marine biodiversity data,• makes that data available as a national information

resource,• creates and hosts metadata for organizations unable to

mobilise metadata to the MEDIN Portal,• produces and promotes standards for biological data

exchange, and• works with holders and users of marine biological data to

ensure best practice and that the full value is being realized from their data.


What can the data be used for?

Data from DASSH can

•Support Marine Spatial Planning and Environmental Impact Assessments

•Provide the evidence base to achieve Good Environmental Status (GES) under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) •Assist in meeting the reporting requirements of UK Marine Monitoring and Assessment Strategy, which in turn addresses the reporting for more than 40 national and international obligations (inc OSPAR, WFD and other marine environmental directives).


Data flow

3rd party data into DASSH

Data reformatting, metadata

creation/checking, QA of data


Submission of data

• DASSH currently accepts data from 3rd parties in a variety of formats from paper records to complex databases.

• No barriers to archiving – but the variability in data structures leads to a more costly archiving process.


Issues

• Adherence to standards– Older datasets do not adhere to standards and often

vary in structure even within organizations.• Large volumes of data still inaccessible

– Availability of data from academic and commercial sources poor

• Data ownership issues– Historical and legacy datasets often have unknown

provenance, normally due to:• Lack of metadata

– Many datasets lack metadata, or where metadata does exist it is lacking mandatory elements that are critical to discovery or evaluation of the data


Submission of data

• DASSH and MEDIN are producing data specifications for the supply of biological data in a standard format. This will – Simplify the ingestion, archiving,

aggregation and re-use of the data– Reduce the costs of archiving

• Wider adoption of the MEDIN Metadata Discovery Standard is taking place.– Greater ability to discover available

data will reduce unnecessary re-surveying


Submission of metadata

• MEDIN Discovery Metadata Standard – compliant with UK GEMINI and INSPIRE

• DASSH have built the MEDIN online tool to simplify the generation and management of metadata

– Supports import and export of XML files– Export metadata directly to the MEDIN

portal

• Metadata should be created as close to the source of the data as possible.


Submission of metadata

MEDINPortalMetadata

Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Harvester


Benefits

• Single point of access to data, simplifying discovery and reducing costs

• Contributing to a national resource

• Ensuring data and metadata complies with UK and international standards

• Meeting knowledge transfer / dissemination requirements

• Offsite storage of data for disaster recovery purposes


Built using PHP, Javascript, OpenLayers & Geoserver

Allows the download of data as CSV or KML

Access to Data

DASSH has developed a web application to query available species data and allow direct download or visualization of the data.

Query can be constructed based on species, location or originating organization.


Access to Data

Data is routinely supplied to the National Biodiversity Network, for dissemination through their portal, the NBN Gateway - http://data.nbn.org.uk/

Data then flows from the NBN to the GBIF and OBIS and EurOBIS portals


Thank you

For more information about DASSH or to provide data to the archive, please contact:

Dan Lear

[email protected]

01752 633291

http://www.dassh.ac.uk

http:// medin partners meeting sept 2010 dassh – the archive for marine species and habitats dan...

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