The IAEA’s Marine Radioactivity Information System MARIS: novel developments facilitating data sharing and scientific studies

Levels of radionuclides in seawater, marine sediment and marine organisms can be influenced by a range of manmade inputs (e.g. nuclear accidents and authorised discharges from nuclear fuel cycle facilities), underlying biogeochemical conditions, and other dynamics such as climate change and sea level rise. On the other hand, the presence of radionuclides – both natural and artificial – in the marine environment offers a wealth of possibilities for the application of radiotracers for quantification of climate and ocean change.

The IAEA, at its Marine Environment Laboratories in Monaco, has for many years been compiling the results of measurements of radionuclides in the marine environment performed in laboratories around the world with the objective of supporting a broad range of monitoring and research activities in its Member States.

Through the Marine Radioactivity Information System (MARIS), the only global data portal dedicated to marine radioactivity, the IAEA makes this data publicly available. MARIS provides data underpinning a broad range of monitoring and research activities.  This data is sourced through national institutes and regional organizations as well as from peer reviewed scientific publications. The IAEA wrangles and checks the data prior to publication.

MARIS can be used to investigate and compare levels of radionuclides in the marine environment at different locations and time periods, to quantify climate and ocean change using radiotracers, to validate marine models and to assess radiation doses. It facilitates reanalyses of one or more historical datasets to address new research questions, comparisons to newly collected data and provision of baseline data in the event of nuclear or radiological incidents and emergencies. The overall aim of MARIS is to promote data re-use and to facilitate open science.

MARIS has recently been redeveloped to offer improved support and possibilities to its user community, including for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning applications. The planned improvements include adoption of Open Data principles, data management broadly in line with FAIR principles, improved API access and adoption of NetCDF format and related technologies, with all associated improvements in metadata provision and opening of access to a rich range of tools for accessing, analysing and visualizing data.

In this paper we describe in more detail the data included in MARIS and present applications of these recent developments, including the use of MARIS data in a soon to be completed IAEA global assessment of marine radioactivity.