Marine seismic metadata for an integrated European scale data infrastructure: the FP7 Geo-Seas project

The Geo-Seas EU 7th framework project aims to create a European scale open data space for marine geophysics and geology in which twenty-nine institutions will share their data assets. GeoSeas aims at interoperability with existing and well established data sharing initiatives in other fields of the marine sciences. At the same time it aims at being compliant with and stimulating the EU INSPIRE directive. Great attention was devoted to the development of the metadata model, which in this perspective is particularly critical. An implementation was chosen based on a three layered structure that leverages the possibilities offered by ISO19115, O&M and SensorML. The resulting model is demonstrated to be effective in solving both interoperability and domain specific issues while being light enough to avoid imposing an excessive burden on data managers.