Black Sea Scene News Spot 2
Aim and overview
The Black Sea SCENE is a three year project supported by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Program promoting research and development. The Black Sea SCENE project is undertaken by 25 partners from Black Sea countries: Ukraine (5), Russia (7), Turkey (3), Romania (2), Bulgaria (4), Georgia (4), together with 7 partners from EU member states (6) and (1) Associated State.
The Black Sea SCENE project aims to establish a Black Sea Scientific Network of leading environmental and socio-economic research institutes, universities and NGO’s from the countries around the Black Sea and to develop a virtual data and information infrastructure that will be populated and maintained by these organisations to improve the identification, access, exchange, quality indication and use of their data and information about the Black Sea.
The Black Sea SCENE research infrastructure will stimulate scientific cooperation, exchange of knowledge and expertise, and strengthen the regional capacity and performance of marine environmental data & information management, underpin harmonization with European marine data quality control/assessment procedures and adoption of international meta-data standards and data-management practices, providing improved data & information delivery services for the Black Sea region at a European level.
Results of the Black Sea SCENE InfoNet
The main goal of the BlackSeaScene project is to develop a sustainable Internet based service (Black Sea Information System):
- to manage and to operate central indexes and database of information on the Black Sea hosted by institutes around the Black Sea.
- to facilitate harmonisation in quality and formats, storing and retrieving of Black Sea information for use by BSS partners, scientific users and public.
Components and Content
The Black Sea Information System brings together all Black Sea information sources (project information, data sets, bibliography etc.) and opens these up for both the scientific community itself as well as for policy makers and the general public. The development of the System is a one-time operation, but the aim of the project is to establish a Black Sea Network as an information service, that will be maintained and updated with newly acquired information from the partners as part of a long-term service agreement. The technical hosting of the services also will have to be maintained to extend the impact of the system.
Benefits and Impacts
The benefits and impacts for the scientific community, the industry and the public can be illustrated as follows:
- The traceability of information on the Black Sea will provide complementary and valuable input to strengthening the scientific capacities needed for Europe to understand and control global change, preserve the ecosystems and protect biodiversity.
- The use of the system keeps the Black Sea Network together and strengthens the position of all individual centres in the region and is an extra building block for the marine research infrastructure in Europe, providing data and data services to the research community. .
- The information sources are managed by the Black Sea Institutes and stored in various formats and are only exchanged on a limited scale between companies, e.g. in case of a joint research project. Despite various co-operative joint projects, there is not yet a common awareness of available data sets and no systematic indexing and archival of these data sets within the institutes. The BlackSeaScene project helps to solve this situation by offering a dedicated facility for storing metadata, supplying guidelines for QC, indexing and retrieving data sets and information.
Partners:
- Marine Information Service, Leidschendam, The Netherlands
- International Bureau of Environmental Studies, Brussels, Belgium
- Institute of Meteorology and Water Management, Maritime Branch, Gdynia, Poland
- Norwegian Institute of Water Research, Oslo, Norway
- Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research, National Geological survey, Utrecht, the Netherlands
- Fieldware International Ecological Development plc., Newbury, United Kingdom
- Ukrainian Scientific Centre of the Ecology of Sea, Odessa, Ukraine
- Marine Hydro-physical Institute of Ukrainian National Academy of Science, Sevastopol, Ukraine
- Ukrainian Scientific and Research Institute of Ecological Problems, Kharkiv, Ukraine
- Odessa National University, Odessa, Ukraine
- Moscow State University. Moscow, Russian Federation
- State Oceanographic Institute, Russian Federal Service “Rosgidromet”, Moscow, Russian Federation
- Southern Branch of the P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology Russian Academy of Science, Gelendzhik, Russian Federation
- P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, Russian Federation
- Institute of Limnology Russian Academy of Science, St. Petersburg, Russian federation
- Space Research Institute Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, Russian Federation
- All Russian Research Institute of Hydro-meteorological Information – World Data Centre B, Obninsk, Russian Federation
- Middle East Technical University, Institute of Marine Sciences, Erdemli, Turkey
- Sinop Fisheries Faculty of Ondokuz Mayis University, Sinop, Turkey
- Black Sea Technical University of Marine Sciences, Trabzon, Turkey
- Institute of Oceanology Bulgarian Academy of Science, Varna, Bulgaria
- Technical University Varna, Varna, Bulgaria
- Institute of Fisheries and Aquaculture, Varna, Bulgaria
- National Institute for Marine Research and Development “GRIGORE ANTIPA”, Constanta, Romania
