about us
Marine data are held by many organisations in the UK and are collected for many different purposes:
Fisheries Research Services FRV Alba na Mara
- for the timing of tides to determine the position of submerged obstacles
- about the position of submerged obstacles
- for marine conservation
- to monitor and forecast weather and ocean states
- to site marine structures
- for scientific research to understand marine processes
The Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN) promotes sharing of, and improved access to, these data. It is an open partnership and its partners represent government departments, research institutions and private companies.
Marine data are expensive to collect and always unique in relation to time and geographical position. There are wide benefits to be gained from working together to share and properly manage these data.
how data sharing will be achieved
MEDIN aims to provide:
- secure long-term management of marine data sets by setting up a network of Data Archive Centres (DACs)
- improved access to authoritative marine data held in this network, through a central discovery metadata portal
- an agreed set of common standards for metadata, data format and content maintained and supported by partners
- guidelines, contractual clauses and software tools to support standards and best practice data management
how MEDIN is organised
Governance of MEDIN is through the MEDIN Sponsors Board and the MEDIN Executive Team. The network is funded by a consortium of fifteen sponsoring organisations.There are also MEDIN partners who are not necessarily sponsors but are organisations contributing to the work of MEDIN.
The MEDIN Partners Forum is an annual open partners meeting to review MEDIN activities and discuss issues of relevance and interest.
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Day-to-day operation of MEDIN is performed by the core team, based in Liverpool. MEDIN workstreams are the vehicle by which different tasks and activities are undertaken. Partners get directly involved in the working groups convened under these work streams.
More information on how MEDIN works can be found on our Useful documents pages
MEDIN reports directly to the Marine Science Coordination Committee (MSCC) (previously the Inter Agency Committee on Marine Science and Technology (IACMST)).
The MEDIN Communication Team consists of members of the core team and supports all communications and outreach functions.