INTER-AGENCY COMMITTEE ON MARINE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Marine Environmental Data (MED) Action Group and Co-ordinators

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The primary aim of the IACMST Marine Environmental Data Coordination activity is to improve access to UK marine environmental data for scientific research, quality of life and wealth creation. Its core activities are: to develop, maintain and make available inventories of data; to improve mechanisms to facilitate data exchange (including contributing UK data to global databases); to develop guidelines for data management; and to raise the visibility of the UK Marine Environmental Data Network.

This MED Annual Report covers the eleventh full year of activities of the Marine Environmental Data (MED) Coordinators and associated Action Group (MEDAG). The Action Group funders met in May and December (Annex 1). The MED Coordination activity is a partnership between Government departments and agencies with an interest in marine environmental data. It is currently co-funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Environment Agency, the Fisheries Research Services of the Scottish Government (FRS/SG), the Met Office and the UK Hydrographic Office. The beginning of the year marked the start of the work plan outlined in the five year forward look, which had been developed in line with one of the recommendations of the 2005 MEDAG Review.

The activity operates in the form of a distributed network between marine environmental data managers in the various agencies and user groups. The focus is provided by the MED Coordinator (funded by NERC) assisted by a second full time post, funded by subscriptions from departments and agencies above, and other BODC staff on an ad hoc basis. Thus, the MED Network Team now comprises: Dr. Lesley Rickards, Dr. Gaynor Evans and Dr. Mark Charlesworth.

At the end of 2006 a plan of work was agreed for 2007 by the MEDAG members: the planned and actual allocation of effort and the associated cost (at Full Economic Cost (FEC)) is shown in Figures 1 and 2 of the main report. Table 1 (main report) shows in more detail the activities from the agreed work plan accompanied by summaries on the progress of each activity and whether they have been completed. Most activities have been successfully completed, in particular:

The UK Tide Gauge and Sea Level Catalogue which includes metadata for sea level data sets from around the UK, searchable via an interactive map:
www.oceannet.org/medag/data_catalogues/

Running a successful workshop “Reviewing the use and accessibility of Marine Data across Government and Industry”
Delivering over 36000 CTD casts to the World Data Centre for Oceanography, Silver Spring
Delivery near real-time CTD data from FRS to the Global Telecommunication System (GTS)
Further collaboration with the Marine Data and Information Partnership (MDIP) including and co-chairing the MDIP Data Archiving Centre (DAC) Working Group, assisting in planning Phase 2 and developing plans to merge the MEDAG and MDIP activities.

At present (2007/08) funding is available from NERC (through BODC) to fund one MED Coordinator post (£106K at FEC) and further funding is contributed by Defra, EA, FRS/SG, Met Office and

UKHO. This latter is currently £50k per annum. In the past it was the practice to charge overheads at 46%, however since 2005 Research Councils have been required to follow Government policy on Government Departments in respect of handling Full Economic Costs. Thus, as noted in the 2006 report, the sponsor’s contributions no longer fund a full post, but approximately 60% of a post. However, during 2007 extra funding was secured by the MEDAG Team to develop the UK Directory of Marine Observing Systems (UKDMOS). As UKDMOS is a MEDAG spin-off project, it is included in Figure 2.

Feedback from the wider marine community has suggested that the current, separate, management arrangements for MEDAG and MDIP are confusing in terms of identifying the different roles of the two groups, responding to (and understanding the basis for) the separate MDIP and MEDAG funding arrangements and the existence of different web-sites from which marine data and information are available. Thus a short discussion paper reviewing the options for a possible merging of MEDAG and MDIP activities was provided to the September IACMST plenary and a revised version submitted to the joint MEDAG-MDIP Sponsors meeting in November. Both of these groups expressed strong support for a full merger of MEDAG and MDIP under a single programme.

An initial draft work plan has been developed for 2008; this can be found in Section 8 of the main report. This is necessarily somewhat fluid and will evolve particularly over the first quarter of 2008 as funding for the next 3-5 years is confirmed and the working arrangements for the new merged MEDAG-MDIP programme are developed. This proposed work plan is based on the present level of two full time posts, although it is estimated that 2.3 staff are needed to deliver the full MEDAG part of the programme. The work plan will be adjusted as necessary and sponsors will kept informed with developments and their views sought on priorities, particularly in relation to funding. A new joint work plan will be produced in the future.