7th EMB Forum - Big Data in Marine Science

Marine science has arrived in the digital age with a constant flood of data providing opportunities to transform the way we study critical changes in the ocean and novel approaches for the management of its resources. This increasing flow of data demands higher integration of diverse types of data from different sources as well as larger and more complex analyses. The 7th EMB Forum will enable dialogue between diverse stakeholders to work towards the implementation of Big Data to support marine science.

Big Data is rapidly transforming our societies leading to a paradigm shift in the way we face major challenges in what has been termed the fourth industrial revolution. Big Data refers to high volume and high complexity data that is collected and processed at high speeds in real-time and requires new forms of processing to enable insight, including artificial intelligence and machine learning. The Big Data approach has not yet been fully implemented in marine science. Data are collected by many different stakeholders and are scattered, fragmented, or simply not available. There is more ocean data than ever before, yet there is not enough to answer many critical data-intensive scientific questions.

The 7th EMB Forum aims to foster discussion and collaboration between diverse stakeholders to work towards solutions enabling the development of Big Data to support marine science. Talks and panel discussions will include representatives from science, industry, policy, governance, data services and NGOs. Key challenges and recommendations will be discussed relating to societal issues including sustainable fisheries and aquaculture, climate change and the oceans, and ocean observations. Cross-cutting issues of data acquisition, data handling and management, service interoperability, data accessibility, computing infrastructure, data sharing, Big Data analytics, training networks and collaboration will be explored.

Launch of EMB Future Science Brief no6

The EMB Future Science Brief no6 ‘Big Data in Marine Science’ will be launched during the 7th EMB Forum. The document provides an assessment of the current status, challenges and solutions for implementing the Big Data approach to support marine science through case-studies covering aquaculture, marine protected area (MPA) planning and monitoring, climate modeling and forecasting, and biological observations. This document is the output from the EMB expert working group on Big Data in Marine Science led by Lionel Guidi, Laboratoire d'Océanographie de Villefranche-sur-Mer, France (Chair) and Antonio Fernandez Guerra, Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre, The Global Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark (Co-Chair).