Sextant : A spatial data infrastructure for marine environments

Access to ocean and marine data is a major issue both for marine related research and for marine environment management in application of Water Framework Directive (WFD) and Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). In the framework of these initiatives, advances have been achieved both in national and European cooperation: data policies, sharing of environmental data and technical implementation of distributed spatial data systems. Ifremer has developed a spatial data infrastructure for marine environments, called Sextant, in order to manage, share and retrieve geographical marine information. Sextant is a support for marine studies and decision-making in environmental issues such as biodiversity, marine renewable energy, integrated management of coastal areas, fishing, coastal and deep-sea environments, exploration and exploitation of the seabed. This data can be collected and processed both by Ifremer as well as its partners. The various technologies used are compliant to Inspire Directive regarding metadata discovery, data access and data visualization. Standardization has always been considered as a key point in achieving the integration of very large partnerships in data management. The discovery service of Sextant is based on the metadata catalogue, using Geonetwok. It allows end-users to search for metadata according to different criteria (localization, theme, producer,…). The data description is normalized according to ISO 19115 standard and Inspire recommendations, the XML encoding follows the ISO 19139 standard. Geonetwork provides an ISO and Inspire validating tool, in order to ensure metadata compliance. Access to the catalogue is provided by the standard OGC service, Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW 2.0.2). Data visualization and data dowloading are available through standard OGC services, Web Map Services (WMS) and Web Feature Services (WFS). Several WMS et WFS services have been implemented within Sextant, according to marine themes, regions and projects. Each service has its own metadata described, according to Inspire recommendations. This allows metadata to be harvested by the French national Geocatalogue and to be directly visualized and downloaded. Moreover, the national Geocatalogue is the entry portal for the French Inspire reporting and for the Inspire harvesting. Therefore, Sextant metadata and data are available on the European Inspire portal.
How to cite
Satra le Bris Catherine, Treguer Mickael, Meillon Julien, Quimbert Erwann (2014). Sextant : A spatial data infrastructure for marine environments. INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community), conference 2014 "INSPIRE for good governance", 16-20 june 2014, Aalborg University, Denmark. https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00253/36454/

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