• The central objective of the Mermaid Project is to provide a seamless, minimum intervention link (Data Broker) to allow end users to rapidly access and use large distributed environmental datasets.
• This will include the development of an Internet-based Data Broker capable of cataloguing, storing/referencing and accessing these datasets.
• Over the past decade numerous national, European and international programmes have focused on the generation of data on the natural environment. There is therefore a multitude of various environmental datasets in existence.
• Potential users will be able to search for, choose, purchase and download data subsets for their specific and immediate data requirements.
• Using the latest Internet and Database tools and complying with international data standards, the Data Broker technology will be designed as an 'open to all' service for data providers and users.
• The marine emergency application domain has been chosen to demonstrate the technology due to its demanding requirements for timely data.
• However, the technology is widely applicable and the Broker will facilitate a very wide range of applications requiring marine environmental data.

Objectives

• Overall Objective: Development of a seamless, minimum intervention link (Data Broker) to allow end users working in the marine environmental emergency application domain to access and use large distributed datasets of environmental parameters.
• Primary Data Consumers/Providers Objective: Development of a major virtual shopping centre for environmental data providers and users providing near real-time user access to major international datasets with inherent support at user sites for sophisticated end user applications, and simple web browser-based data reader/viewer applications.
• Key Technology Objectives: Development of web-enabled neutral formats for environmental data transmission and exchange based on existing standards and improved for temporal knowledge representation and management, combined with the development of web-enabled methods (incorporating E-commerce) to search, extract, compress and transmit the variety of data types routinely encountered.