A Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure to manage multidisciplinary, inhomogeneous and fragmented geodata in a FAIR perspective ... the Adriatic Sea experience

The Institute of Marine Sciences (ISMAR) and the Institute of Polar Sciences (ISP) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) have gathered a substantial amount of heterogeneous geodata through the years in the Adriatic Sea, with different methodologies and for multiple scopes regarding geological, oceanographic, biological, anthropogenic aspects, and their interactions.

To overcome challenges in datasets heterogeneity and fragmentation, a Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDI) has been set up, with the aim to integrate and preserve geodata, foster their reuse (e.g. the generation of scenarios for geological past and future developments by the application of numerical models), and ensure a good degree of FAIRness (FAIR: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). The MSDI consists of a Spatial Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) based on specific data models designed following in part the INSPIRE Directive data specifications, a WebGIS, a metadata catalogue, and a cloud system. This paper shows the potentialities of this MSDI and discusses the main implementation steps, the elements that make up the infrastructure, the level of FAIRness reached, the main elements promoting FAIRness, and the gaps to be covered.

Compliance with the FAIR principles represents a fundamental step to developing interoperability with European and international marine data management infrastructures for handling and exchanging multidisciplinary data.