Legal Marine Data infrastructure

This purpose of this Study wa to support measures towards the establishment of the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODNET) proposed in the Blue Book on an integrated maritime policy for the European Union.

The objective of the project was to outline the present data collection infrastructure in place, including for what purpose marine data is collected by public bodies, how much is spent annually on this, and how much income is derived from sales of marine data and products derived from marine data. The costs included were the costs of collection, processing, archiving and dissemination as well as the administrative overhead of the body collecting the data. Additionally, the study looked at how much time and money is spent by (1) private organisations involved in port expansion, wind farm siting, pipeline or cable laying, fisheries management (2) by the public authorities that regulate them (3) bodies concerned with nature conservation and fisheries management

• Searching for existing marine data;

• Collecting new marine data; and

• Processing marine data

The socio-economic benefits of reducing uncertainty were analysed and an assessment was undertaken of legal instruments that could be deployed by the EU to support multi-purpose data collection.