• serve as the foundation for a distributed eScience framework to meet the needs of scientists and society to enable new science and knowledge creation by transparent and integrated access to marine data.
• satisfy the clearly articulated demands of the German research community for reliable and easy access to marine research data, at a single focal point (Portal).
• complement existing data repositories and the new portal with well articulated and understood workflows from the instrument to the data product, which implement the necessary level of quality assurance.
• develop, through own research and through networking with data producers, data users and funding agencies, the organizational means and technical components for an integrated data system for fundamental and applied marine research.
• implement these elements into an operational, constantly improving infrastructure with increasingly stable financial backing.
• become a leading “player” in the international activities in its field for a national hub within the developing international data networks.

Community

In 2010 the research community and government agencies have strongly expressed their need for “better” access to the results of German and international marine research, in particular to all kinds of resulting data. There is growing awareness that more effort must be devoted to both: quality assurance and interdisciplinary combination of data from traditionally separate disciplines.

Sustainability

A technical and organizational infrastructure to support these needs cannot operate as a series of projects ad infinitum. It must develop and find approval for a “business” plan, based on an appropriate mix of permanent and soft money funding, which is supported by the user community and funding agencies. Of course it is paramount that the plan is compatible with structures in the international domain, especially ESFRI and GEOSS organizational requirements.

Technology

There is a growing flood of data in marine research, whether from permanently operated research platforms or from major projects, which could be put to better use. The growth is clearly facilitated by technological development of sensors as well as research needs, especially in the fields of global change research and protection of the environment. This push from the data creation side must be complemented by the development and implementation of methods and technologies from the standardisation of sensor communication pushed by organisations like OGC or IEEE.

Interoperability

The international development of data infrastructures supporting data intensive science in the fields of Earth system science is depicted in the GEOSS system graph. Its implications are manifold, most obvious however is the need for interoperability: International, interdisciplinary at the technical (format and protocol-) and semantic level as well as at the organizational and “business” level.