Survey of National Coastal and Marine geoportals: European developments

Résumé En

Rapid changes in marine and coastal areas demand implementation of processes and tools to enhance knowledge and management of these territories. To contribute to these goals, Marine and Coastal Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) facilitate sharing and use of spatial data across a broad range of stakeholders by promoting data and metadata harmonization and services interoperability. This paper describes the first results of a European Web survey undertaken to assess the developments of existing national marine and coastal geoportals for SDIs or similar Web services. The Web survey led to an inventory of 35 national operational geoportals. For each geoportal, 12 characteristics were measured in November 2014 and in March 2015, in order to monitor current developments. Based on the preliminary survey results, four types of geoportals were distinguished: Atlas-like geoportals, (2) Hydrographic Office geoportals, (3) Oceanographic/Marine Data Centre geoportals, and (4) Hybrid geoportals.