Bridging “Around the world in 80 days” and “Journey to the Center of the Earth”: web-based mapping of exploration seismics data around the globe

Exploration Seismics is one of the most important geophysical methods that could provide insights of the Earth crust up to depths of several Kilometers. This approach has been used widely in many areas of the globe accumulating large datasets that allow to improve the knowledge of the Earth dynamics.

Providing access to recent and old datasets to the widest scientific community is of paramount importance to foster, as much as possible, collaborative research among scientists. In this, the possibility to find, preview and possibly process data directly on the web is extremely relevant.

National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics - OGS is deeply committed in developing a web-based framework named Seismic data Network Access Point (SNAP) (https://snap.ogs.trieste.it), that allows scientists to remotely explore data assets that have been acquired by OGS itself and by other research institutions. SNAP is used within several international data dissemination initiatives such as EMODnet, SeaDataNet, SCAR-SDLS and others.

These kinds of initiatives often focus on specific areas, such as for example the European Seas or Antarctica, that are located far from each other and that have different needs in terms of projections or bounding boxes. Finding a one-fits-all solution for web mapping and data access to georeferenced data in such diverse environments is not easy.

Polar areas, in particular, are as complex to handle as difficult to survey. At the same time these regions are of overwhelming importance for climate studies. The remoteness, extreme weather conditions, and environmental sensitivity of Antarctica make new data acquisition complicated and existing seismic data very valuable. It is, therefore, critical that existing data are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). The aim of the SNAP framework and its implementations is to allow seismic data acquired in distant and different regions of the globe to be immediately accessible within a FAIR paradigm, offering all standard OGC compliant metadata models, and OGC compliant data access services.

We will present in detail the SNAP web-based framework in the light of Open Data and FAIR principles, and its planned future developments.