One of the key roles that the GOOS Regional Alliances (GRAs) are called to exercise is the pooling of information on operational marine monitoring activities in the regions. This role has been pursued in Workpackage 1 of GRAND – “GOOS Regional Alliances Network Development” – a Specific Support Action funded under the RTD 6th Framework Programme of the European Commission. A significant inventory task in the GOOS regions has been undertaken to evaluate:

(i) the nature and extent of key marine environmental issues in the various GOOS regions, and
(ii) the capabilities and assets currently deployed in terms of ongoing initiatives, technological infrastructures and equipment, resources and funding to address these issues.

The collection of information was conducted by each GRA and brought together the relevant metadata from member/partner entities and other institutes that have activities relevant to operational oceanography in the respective regions.

The survey provided the baseline information for the GOOS Regional Prospectus that has been prepared in GRAND and gives a comprehensive snapshot on priority sectors and activities related to marine observations and forecasting in the GOOS regions, on marine research and activities in support of operational oceanography, and underpins the research and technological developments required to maximise the benefits from global scale ocean observations to local coastal needs and operations.

This survey was a first effort of its kind for the GRAs and should be considered as a first trial in gathering such a wide-ranging set of information. The response was not at the same level from all GRAs even because not all GRAs have the same size and the complexity and spread of data was different in the respective GRAs. This effort has however set the basis on how to collect such important information and can be refined and updated by GRAs in the future. The results shown on this webpage are based on the metadata received from participating institutes in the GRAND survey, and this may not necessarily give a complete picture at least in some of the regions.

The results of this activity are presented in this web page where the collected metadata are summarised in the form of lists and charts to allow easy viewing and reference. To facilitate access to the charts, this website has been structured with two separate links. The ‘Global Survey Results’ takes you directly to the charts that summaries metadata across all GOOS Regional Alliances and information is presented to compare the GRAs. The ‘Survey Results by Region’ provides the information specific to each region.

The survey was led by the MedGOOS Secretariat at the IOI-Malta Operational Centre, University of Malta.