Bridging the Data Gulf: Designing a FAIR-Compliant Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure for Sustainable Coastal Governance in The Sultanate of Oman

The successful implementation of marine spatial planning (MSP) and mitigation against coastal hazards needs to have access to a variety of quality data. Critical marine information, such as bathymetry, fisheries, biodiversity, aquaculture, coastal infrastructure, and oceanographic models, in the Sultanate of Oman is usually divided among ministries and institutions, is in a wide range of formats, and is not standardised in terms of metadata. This type of insulation would add to the absence of interoperability, discoverability, and reuse, which has a direct effect on evidence-based policy and sustainable development of a blue economy. This study fills this gap by designing and testing a conceptual model of a national Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDI), which is clearly designed to be founded on the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) guiding principles. Going beyond a generic SDI model, the framework offers a customised way of implementation in the Omani context. The methodology will integrate an in-depth examination of the best practices of international MSDI, as well as a stakeholder requirements analysis of the main Omani government and research institutions. The suggested framework explains architectural elements, metadata profiles, semantic interoperability protocols, and a governance model in order to achieve long-term sustainability. This framework, as applied to the case study, can revolutionise the marine data situation in the Sultanate of Oman. Some major products are the prototype metadata catalogue, the semantic ontology of alignment between national data and international vocabularies, and a policy roadmap. The study also provides a generalisable template to other coastal countries and illustrates that FAIR-based MSDIs are not the technical systems and structures but the basic support systems of transdisciplinary ocean science, climate resilience and efficient maritime spatial governance.