Transcript Marine PowerPoint presentation - Marine Environmental Data and

Natural England and MEDIN,
Challenges and Achievements
Ian Saunders
Lead Adviser, Geographic Information and Analysis Services Team
About Natural England
 Statutory advisor on the natural environment.
 Independent Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB).
 Purpose: “to ensure that the natural environment is conserved,
enhanced and managed for the benefit of current and future
generations, thereby contributing to sustainable development”.
 Marine remit for England’s territorial waters (out to 12nm).
 ~2000 staff of which ~120 engaged in marine work.
 Members of UK Marine Monitoring Assessment Strategy.
Overview to Natural England’s Marine Programme
 Advice to Industries & Regulators:
Ports, Marinas, Shipping, Aggregates,
Fisheries, Energy (inc. renewable, oil
and gas), Biodiversity, Seascapes.
 Management advice for existing MPAs:
(SACs, SPAs, SSSIs)
 Proposals for new SACs and SPAs
 Marine & Coastal Access Act:
‒ Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs),
‒ Marine spatial planning,
‒ Inshore Fisheries Conservation
Authorities
 Monitoring: MPAs and habitats & species
across wider marine environment.
MEDIN and Natural England – the history
When Natural England was created in 2006 there was a shift in the
ways of working, IT systems, office locations and work programmes
from English Nature
The increase in workload on the maritime staff being generated from
casework and protected site identification meant that understanding
and archiving data within Natural England fell by the wayside
Knowledge of using programmes such as MapInfo, Marine Recorder
and the importance of filing was lost or fell off the bottom of peoples
to do lists
At the same time MEDIN were evolving but without the knowledge or
understanding of data and metadata Natural England were unable to
engage fully with MEDIN
Natural England – the problems
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Dispersed office locations, teams stretched
across 10+ offices
Regional and national marine teams
Each office location had its own hard and
electronic storage facilities, some bigger
than others
At the time there was no established
cataloguing or archiving procedure set up
so staff put data and reports in local storage
As offices were closed and staff moved on
the knowledge of what was stored where
was lost
There was an awareness of MEDIN and the
DACs in Natural England but the knowledge
and engagement were not
Natural England – the solutions
• AUDIT
• It was clear that as offices were closing that data needed to be
properly archived internally as well as externally
• To make the task achievable we used a modified MESH metadata
template, this is not MEDIN metadata compliant however
• At the time guidance wasn’t available from MEDIN as to how to
create MEDIN metadata, only the standard was published
• 10 staff over 20+ office locations were searched and data logged
Natural England – the solutions
Engaging with MEDIN
• Whilst the audit was underway MEDIN started to publish more user
friendly tools and guidance to enable users to create metadata both
locally and online
• At the same time a dedicated team in MEDIN were set up to help
users with metadata queries
• MEDIN were able to take in Natural England’s MESH metadata and
upload it to the MEDIN metadata portal, enabling NE to see where
the gaps were
• The new online metadata portal makes it easier to generate
metadata for new datasets
• DASSH working with the SNCBs to better handle data entered into
Marine Recorder
Engaging with MEDIN – the Marine Conservation
Zones project
• As part of the identification process for the Marine Conservation
Zones the four Regional Project teams gathered new data to support
their recommendations
• To ensure data is not lost at the end of the Regional Projects, NE,
JNCC, Defra and the Regional Projects have sought support from
MEDIN to ensure full metadata is created for all the datasets, and
where allowed, pass the data to the relevant Data Archiving Centres
• Having a complete archive of all the datasets used and publically
accessible enable stakeholders to better understand the
recommendations to Government in 2012 and will allow the datasets
to be used again in further research
Natural England – where next?
• Delivery of data from the Regional Projects to DASSH
• Programme to complete Natural England’s metadata listings to
enable data to be lodged with DASSH, UKHO and BGS, and then
lodge the data itself
• Full utilisation of the services provided by MEDIN to enable others to
access our data
• Engaging with Defra and the UKHO to fulfil our obligations under
INSPIRE
• Move towards a more clear and open Data Licensing policy
• More use of the MEDIN portal for data mining
• Increasing the knowledge of the services provided by MEDIN within
Natural England