Using message brokering and data mediation on earth science data to enhance global maritime situational awareness

Maritime Situational Awareness is the understanding of anything associated with the maritime domain that could impact the security, safety, economy, or environment. The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) has developed an in-house data collection, data analysis and data visualiztion facility, known as the Blue Hub. The Blue Hub operates as a research and development platform for integrated maritime surveillance and maritime situational awareness. It has global coverage and has been applied, for example, to support counter-piracy around Africa, to investigate fishing activity and to monitor the growing ship traffic in the Arctic. In order to improve maritime awareness and support risk assessment, the JRC has started to integrate data from the marine and atmosheric science community. In particular the JRC is interested in using forecasts from operational ocean models and weather models. For the Blue Hub a new type of data server, called ERDDAP, that performs message brokering and data mediation has become an essential tool for the accessing of ocean forecast data as quickly as possible in easy to use formats. NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the USA) is making global oceanography and weather data available through the Environmental Research Division's Data Access Program (ERDDAP) data broker. ERDDAP provides RESTful machine to machine communication, data brokering and data mediation by converting data to a number of standard and developer friendly formats, including some Open Geospatial Consortium formats. In this paper, we demonstrate how data brokering and mediation is making complex scientific data accessible. We show how such data is being integrated into the Blue Hub system to enhance maritime situational awareness.