Use and sharing of marine observations and data by industry: good practice guide. (Version 1, 2017).

Abstract

For some time now, the private sector has been namechecked by marine observatories and public data-sharing initiatives as a target-user of their resources and/or as a potential source of data, with little concomitant targeted development by these initiatives to facilitate this. Experiences in the framework of the Europe Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) reveal that the current business-as-usual scenario is not effective for marine observatories and public data-sharing initiatives to actively engage industry, either as users or providers of data. The purpose of these guidelines is to (i) raise awareness of the issues which hinder effective engagement of industry with marine observatories and related data-sharing initiatives, (ii) stimulate an informed debate between public data collectors/providers, data portal managers and data users/ providers from the private sector, and (iii) formulate possible solutions to overcome some of the identified barriers which ultimately lead to increased use and provision of marine data by and from industry.