A new research initiative is making a vast amount of deep-sea data more accessible to scientists and researchers.
The effort involves the creation of a new data standard that makes a huge amount of deep-sea videos and photos available by “rationalizing” them. This process would catalog and document the data, making searching it much more efficient and effective for scientists across the globe.
The effort is led by GEOMAR, a team from the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers. The team has developed a new data standard making global use of the images easier. The new standard was announced in the journal Nature Scientific Data.
Commenting on the new standard, Dr. Timm Schoening, lead author and scientist at GEOMAR, stated:
“There have already been efforts worldwide for several years to make data universally accessible. With our consistent metadata standard, we create the conditions for scientific photos and videos from the deep sea to also become internationally accessible in accordance with this initiative. And we are making software available to make this standard usable…Our approach draws great interest…Therefore, we are confident that it will serve as a template for a new international standard for underwater imagery.”
