Euro GO-SHIP: developing a Research Infrastructure concept to support European hydrography

Project Information

Euro GO-SHIP

Grant agreement ID: 101094690

DOI

10.3030/101094690

Project closed

EC signature date 15 December 2022

Start date 1 December 2022

End date 30 November 2025

Funded under

• Research infrastructures

Total cost

€ 2 619 125,00

EU contribution

€ 2 619 125,00

Coordinated by

NORCE RESEARCH AS
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Euro GO-SHIP (Euro GO-SHIP: developing a Research Infrastructure concept to support European hydrography)

Reporting period: 2023-12-01 to 2025-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The ocean delivers many services to humanity including transportation, climate regulation, food provisioning and recreation. However our activities threaten some of these services, e.g , sea level rise driven by warming, Harmful Algal Blooms and deoxygenation linked to eutrophication and acidification linked to CO2 emissions affecting fisheries and marine biodiversity.
Managing the ocean demands a great deal of information and is key to delivering the European Green Deal with Information gathered from ships provides much of the data required for this purpose. This activity, known as hydrography, involves lowering instruments through the ocean to capture water samples at multiple depths. As one of the oldest ways of working in the ocean, hydrography remains the backbone of modern oceanography since direct sampling and analysis provides the highest quality observations and allows the largest range of parameters to be observed. These results provide high quality information for the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) EU policy instruments such as the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD).
Currently nearly every coastal state in Europe undertakes hydrographic surveys of its coastal waters, with some also delivering surveys across entire ocean basins. Despite this high level of activity and the long history of shipboard hydrographic observations there is surprisingly little integration between the groups that undertake these activities. EuroGO-SHIP will develop a concept for a Research Infrastructure to support all European hydrographic observations aimed at providing a more comprehensive and higher quality dataset with known uncertainties that is accessible under FAIR data principles and identifying cost efficiencies that a RI will deliver.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the final reporting period we determined the data needs of the operational modelling community (Task 4.4) and mapped existing real time data pathways (Task 2.2). We defined the data format, metadata and data pathway for velocity observations (Task 2.2). In Task 2.3 the mathematical framework to add uncertainty estimates to observations via a secondary quality control procedure was set out.

We also designed the foundations of the EuroGO-SHIP Best Practices & Standards (BP&S) System (task 3.1) which centered on two complementary dimensions: governance and technical implementation. Task 3.2 operationalized the principles defined in Task 3.1 by demonstrating how a future RI would review, revise, and validate best practices. Four coordinated pilot activities addressed core hydrographic measurements: salinity, nutrients, carbonate system, and data handling. Together, they provided the experimental evidence needed to refine Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), assess feasibility of shared facilities, and demonstrate community-scale interoperability.

In parallel WP4 continued to evaluate the potential impact of EuroGO-SHIP on our ability to observe Europe´s egional seas. Task 4.1 which considered the impacts of improvements in data quality selected the reanalysis products and methods that we were used in the simulations and analyses and undertook the simulations. WP4 also included intensive interaction with stakeholders, including data originators (Task 4.2) governments and funding agencies (Task 4.3) and end-users (Task 4.4). Data originators were engaged at workshops (ICES, MonGOOS, Black Sea), which reiterated the importance of our data curation work in Task 2.2 and EuroGO-SHIP's potential role in hydrographical advocacy. This has stimulated our development of success stories as accessible pen pictures of hydrography's importance.

WP5 focussed on determining EuroGO-SHIP's place in the existing Marine RI landscape (Task 5.1) and developing a structure, governance and financial model for a future RI to support European hydrography (Task 5.2). We built on activities in the first reporting period by organising a dedicated workshop in June 2024 incorporating a series of structured activities to collect detailed information on the capabilities of RIs, associated RI projects, data aggregators, and service providers. In Task 5.2 and D5.2 we formulated a series of recommendations including short-term actions, longer-term actions and a preferred option for the governance that reflected the opinion of the consortium.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

We have advanced the state of the art in each area that we aimed to:
O1. To develop a concept, including architecture, governance, and financing, for an RI to support European hydrography.
We have developed both a thorough understanding of the needs of the hydrographic community and a basic concept for how these can be met in the future within the RI landscape. Our vision is for an RI with a small core and a distributed set of services delivered in collaboration with other RIs.
O2. To demonstrate the feasibility of providing new user facilities and technologies within the framework of a cross border model
We have shown that it is feasible to operate equipment jointly across different countries via a demonstration activity around salinity, completed a nutrient best practice exercise and a preliminary investigation of how Europe can address the need for reference materials for CO2 observations. A SoR forms the basis of our thinking for future activities and services that EuroGO-SHIP should deliver. We undertook further consultation with the marine RI community through structured interviews and at an RI workshop immediately after our 2nd annual meeting in Venice in June 2024. We explored potential governance options for the future of EuroGO-SHIP and laid out possible scenarios.
O3. To showcase the power of the new RI to support science excellence by tackling key research challenges that would not be possible now.
We addressed this issue by determining the reduction in the time taken to detect human impacts in the ocean that would occur if the sorts of improvements once could expect from a EuroGO-SHIP training and quality programme would occur. The results showed that a significant reduction in trend detection time would likely follow. This included ocean acidification, deoxygenation and eutrophication in the Baltic, Black and Mediterranean Seas.
O4. To assess the regional need for RI services across European Regional Seas (including the Baltic, NE Atlantic, Mediterranean and Black Sea)
We undertook a series of Black Sea workshops to assess regional needs. In the ICES and MonGOOS communities, additional data was collected via targeted interviews with key individuals.
O5. To map data flows and propose an optimal data curation and preservation strategy that adheres to FAIR principals for observations from European hydrography that serves the wider science community.
We worked extensively on data structures for hydrographic data, showing that there is a significant disconnect between data providers and data users as information often gets lost in the gap between them. We propose a change to the existing system such that the flow of data is enabled through optimized metadata. A framework for assessing observational uncertainty was developed in Task 2.3. Implementation of such a framework will ultimately improve the usability and value of hydrographic data.