European Directory of Marine Environmental Data (EDMED)

EDMED, initiated by BODC in 1991 within the EU Marine Science and Technology (MAST) framework, is an inventory of marine data and Data Holding Centres. Currently, it describes more than 3800 data sets, from a wide range of disciplines, held at over 600 Data Holding Centres across Europe. It has established itself as a European standard for indexing and searching data sets relating to the marine environment.

The EDMED format was revised and upgraded as part of the SEA-SEARCH (2003 - 2005) initiative and a brand new search interface has been implemented. EDMED, along with other marine databases is being developed further by the EU SeaDataNet (2006 - 2011) project.

Directory entries are prepared by institutes and collated by the national centres who are responsible for populating and maintaining their national directories. These national directories are combined to provide a single centralised system managed by BODC.

Querying EDMED

EDMED may be searched using any combination of the following methods

• Free search — Select on words or part of words by typing a character string
• Pull down lists — Select an item from the pull down list revealed by clicking on the item
• Multiple selection boxes — Select an item or items from the selection box
• Numbers — Type a number into the box

After defining your query you may indicate in which order the selected items should be displayed and how many records are returned per screen.

Having submitted your query, the records that match are displayed in a results table. A summary of each record is displayed. If you wish to look at the full details of a record click on the icon for the record of interest.

Improving EDMED

Activities are now underway by over 35 European SeaDataNet partners, from more than 30 coastal states, to expand the coverage of EDMED with many new entries from new partners, from the Baltic Sea, Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea and with updates of existing EDMED entries. Also a new updating / retrieval scheme is being developed, using XML and fast replication technology over the internet.

Documentation

Institutes can create their EDMED entries following the format and guidelines in the document

How to prepare entries for EDMED — October 1999  (161 KB)

The EDMED forms are collated by the SeaDataNet network of national collating centres, who are responsible for seeking out, collating and maintaining their national EDMED directories following the format and guidelines in the document.

Instructions for collating EDMED entries — January 2000   (66 KB)

Further details may be obtained from the EDMED Coordinator located at BODC.