EMODnet and Copernicus Marine Service: Towards a reinforced partnership

summary of meeting 

Objective of the meeting:  to foster current collaboration and leverage future mutual areas of benefit between EMODnet and CMEMS

Expected Outcome: to initiate a partnership roadmap between EMODNet and Mercator Ocean/CMEMS

• The first part of the meeting (AM) is devoted to mutual presentation and current situation (teams, mandates, current and future portfolio, events).
• The second part of the meeting (PM) aims at exploring potential avenues for cooperation. At the end of the day, we should have enough elements to draft a partnership roadmap.

Main actions:

1. Regular meetings need to organized ideally every 6 months with the objective to better define the boundary and interfaces of the two systems, analyze dependencies and requirements (e.g. what are the long term needs of EMODnet Habitats with respect to CMEMS offer, what are CMEMS requirements for EMODnet bathymetric data), mutualise effort & offer  when possible, agree on joint actions (e.g. in-situ observing system/EOOS, communication) and converge in the long term to a sustainable and effective cooperation.
2. User tracking and user knowledge: both Copernicus Marine and EMODnet need to better know their users. Information on users should be shared between the two systems. On the longer run, common approaches to monitor users could be developed. There is also a need to share statistics for the EMODnet physic portal.
3. EMODnet Physics Portal: It is important to continue ensuring visibility of the contribution of the Copernicus Marine Service (that provides input data to EMODnet physics).
4. EMODnet Chemistry Portal: interfaces with CMEMS in-situ TAC should be developed.  This will be analyzed and reported back at the next meeting.
5. Events/stakeholders interaction: it is beneficial to identify key events and mutualise effort to present a complementary offer to the Marine community. More cross fertilization is necessary – potential events identified could be: workshop mid next year for MSFD with regional sea conventions and regional EuroGOOS ROOSes), possible hacktaton (http://www.opensealab.eu/), EMD18, Copernicus Marine Service related events, EOOS conference in 2018.
6. Post 2020 issues? A meeting is needed – in 6 weeks time more or less (beginning of the 2018 – Brussels?) also in the presence of DG GROW staff.
7. MoU – an update is needed before next summer 2018 for a good showcase at the EU Maritime Days.  The updated MoU could feature interfaces between CMEMS and other EMODnet portals (chemistry, bathymetry and habitats).

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