Aldino Campos
Engineer
Portuguese Task Group for the Extension of the Continental Shelf
Portugal

Abstract
Preparation of Integrated Geographic Information for Marine and Coastal Water Management - The SNIMar Project

Co-Author: SNIMar project team, EMEPC/IPMA/DGT/IDL

The Task Group for the Extension of the Continental Shelf (EMEPC) has collected and stored a wide range of technical and scientific data to support the project of the extension of the Portuguese continental shelf, yet web-based access technologies are required to disseminate data. The SNIMar project , promoted by the EMEPC, in partnership with the Norwegian Mapping Authority (NMA), the National Land Survey of Iceland (NLSI) and the Portuguese Sea and Atmosphere Institute (IPMA), has as main goal to develop a Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDI) to increase the capacity of assessing and predicting environmental status in marine waters. This MSDI will integrate and harmonise all marine related data available at the partner institutions enabling a far more comprehensive analysis at all levels of government, commercial and non-profit sectors and academia. The MSDI will also allow access and an exchange of information using web services or via direct access between the systems containing the selected thematic, descriptive or spatial data. This will be achieved by means of innovative technological solutions in accordance with the technical specifications for the implementation of the INSPIRE Directive. Furthermore, a marine data policy will be established for the dissemination of the SNIMar data in accordance to all partner institutions data policies. INSPIRE compliant metadata will be created or updated based on an extension of the MIG profile, developed by the General-Directorate for the Territory (DGT), the SNIMar metadata profile. This profile was optimized in order to increase the SNIMar geoportal search tool effectiveness and to reduce the waiting time for obtaining high quality marine related data. The geoportal will provide access to a metadata catalogue, centralized at IPMA, and to different web services that will access data at local servers. To ensure that the system will be maintained after its conclusion, free and open source technologies and a cloud solution are going to be adopted to enable interoperability and compatibility between geographic data and services.