Concept and objectives Upgrade BSS

Concept

The project "Black Sea SCENE" (Black Sea Scientific Network) started 1^st December 2005 as a FP6 Research Infrastructures Coordination Action and ended 30th November 2008. Black Sea SCENE supports the integrated provision of infrastructure related services to the research community in the Black Sea region. It stimulates scientific cooperation and exchange of knowledge, expertise and environmental/socio-economic data & information. Black Sea SCENE (BSS) is considered as a "satellite" network of the SeaDataNet infrastructure, that started around the same time as an I3 project within the Research Infrastructures programme with a 5 years duration. Therefore, where possible, Black Sea SCENE activities are tuned to the SeaDataNet strategy and approach.

Achievements of the on-going Black Sea SCENE

Establishment of a Black Sea cooperative network consisting of 25 partners from Black Sea countries - Ukraine (5), Russia (7), Turkey (3), Romania (2), Bulgaria (4), Georgia (4) - together with 6 partners from EU member states and 1 from an Associated State.
Creation of an overview of available data & information within the 25 BS institutes, including information on the Data Quality Control procedures in use and applied to their data sets
Population and maintenance for the Black Sea region of the SeaDataNet EDMED (data sets), EDMERP (research projects), EDMO (organisations) and CSR (research cruise summary reports) V0 metadatabases
Realisation of the prototype Black Sea SCENE distributed virtual data & information infrastructure including unified access to the distributed databases of a number of partners (CDI V0)

The general objectives of the UP-GRADE BS-SCENE project are:

To expand the existing network with an additional 19 marine environmental institutes and universities from the 6 Black Sea countries:
> To improve and harmonize the marine data management practices in the region, and to expand the coverage of the data infrastructure
>To strengthen and improve the exchange of scientific knowledge, and regional cooperation of institutes for environmental problems and for the protection, rehabilitation and sustainable development of the Black Sea Ecosystem
To improve significantly the technical performance of the data & information infrastructure by adopting and implementing the latest technical developments and standards of the Joint Research Activities of the SeaDataNet project:
> To implement the so-called V1 versions of all metadirectories (EDMED, EDMERP, CSR and EDIOS), which are now mutually harmonised, make use of Common Vocabularies and are based on ISO 19115
> To implement the V1 version of the CDI service with unified access to datasets and downloading services
To enlarge the number of local data bases that will be made available for user access via the Black Sea SCENE infrastructure.
To expand the existing metadatabases with additional entries from new partners.
To assess the scientific data quality of the Black Sea partner's datasets, through screening (Quality Control) of all data sets, to be executed by each Black Sea partner
To implement innovative data visualisation and viewing techniques
To prepare long term arrangements for sustaining the Black Sea SCENE network and the Black Sea distributed virtual data and information infrastructure

For the new institutes there are a number of additional objectives:

To become well acquainted with the European Water Framework Directive (for environmental monitoring and hereto related laboratory analysis), Birds and Habitats Directives and other existing and draft European Directives (for example on Integrated Coastal Zone Management and the Marine Strategy).
To assess the Data Quality Control methods, that they are using at present. This is done by making an inventory of their DQC methods and by comparing these methods with European standards, guidelines and practices.