The German Marine Data Ecosystem - collaborative management and development

The Helmholtz Association's Research Field Earth and Environment and the German Marine Research Alliance (DAM)—a partnership between the federal government, five northern German states, and 25 research-oriented organizations—have come together to connect the distributed data infrastructures of their members and partners. Their collaboration aims to create a Marine Data Ecosystem, facilitating centralized access to marine data and information. This ecosystem will provide open global access to FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data from German marine science. A key driver behind the establishment of this integrated research data infrastructure is the pressing need to support scientific advancements and policy development to address the impacts of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss in marine environments. By digitizing observation platforms and establishing a shared information framework, this initiative is essential for enhancing marine science and supporting data-informed decision-making on a political and societal level. The German Marine Data Ecosystem also originates from the Helmholtz Strategic Initiative DataHub, which has developed a data architecture to integrate marine and Earth system science data into national, European, and international frameworks. A central element of this system is the German Marine Data Portal (https://marine-data.de), which serves as an access point for open marine research data. Through the DataHub, this initiative contributes to DAM’s efforts to build a decentralized infrastructure for processing, archiving, and disseminating marine observational and model data. Together, the DAM and DataHub initiatives form the basis of a coordinated data management infrastructure that strengthens German marine science and fosters international cooperation. At the national level, the DataHub, and thus the Marine Data Ecosystem, contributes directly to Germany's National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI), which integrates research data management across scientific disciplines and serves as Germany’s link to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). A significant component of the Marine Data Ecosystem is the “Underway Research Data pilot project”, coordinated by DAM. This project ensures that sensors on German research vessels continuously provide quality-controlled and FAIR data, making it available in global repositories. Serving as a demonstrator of the DataHub’s capabilities, “Underway Research Data pilot project” supports systematic data collection and enhances data-driven marine research by enabling FAIR, open-access data, and integration with European and global initiatives.