Decades’ worth of data revealing the health of seas and marine wildlife, will be made freely available for the first time, following the launch of a new ‘Data Hub’ by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas).
The hub is being launched alongside newly released data on fish populations and climate change and is an important step in the #OpenDefra project, which will see the release of thousands of datasets over the year in the biggest government data giveaway the country has ever seen.
Cefas CEO Tom Karsten said:
“The launch of the Cefas Data Hub is a real opportunity to contribute to the open data revolution and shine a light on the increasingly important role Cefas plays in safeguarding the health of our seas and the nation’s supply of seafood, today and over the decades. The Data Hub has been developed entirely by our in-house experts and represents the wide breadth and depth of our technological innovation and marine science excellence.”
The initial data release will include information collected from hundreds of surveys of UK seas using Cefas’ Research Vessels, including Cefas Endeavour and also remotely operated platforms, such as the network of Cefas Smartbuoys. It also includes data on temperature and salinity of UK sea waters to understand climate change impacts.
Following this initial release, more data will be made available on an on-going basis and work will continue to develop the data publishing system. Cefas holds the second largest data reserve in Defra, following close behind the Environment Agency.
The Cefas Data Hub is formed of two key elements – the experts and the software system. A team of data specialists and practitioners have been brought together to combine the very latest expertise in data standards, storage, access, analysis and visualisation.
Together with Cefas in-house software developers they have developed an on-line system to provide the public with a platform to interrogate, view and download open data in a variety of formats. Users will be able to browse data through interactive keywords, as well as performing their own text searches.
The data is a first batch of 585 data sets, the majority representing Cefas’ legacy marine data collection. A full picture of Cefas marine data will be available next year, following a process of incremental data release. Data held on behalf of Cefas’ commercial clients will not be released.
The Cefas Data Hub will be populated by hundreds of free marine datasets in the coming months.
The Data Hub can be found on www.cefas.co.uk/cefas-data-hub
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