Integrating Remote Sensing, in Situ and Model Data in a Marine Information System (mis)

Today, diierent types of sensors collect large amounts of data to monitor the marine environment. It is desirable to combine these datasets with data generated by diierent types of environmental models. A marine information system (MIS) where remotely sensed data from satellites and aircrafts, in situ data from eld experiments and synthetic data from numerical models can easily be integrated, is therefore desired. Such a system must provide tools for storing, retrieving, analysing and presenting diierent types of marine datasets, and ooer a common user interface to the extensive collections of complex data. A MIS will be particularly useful within operative monitoring and forecasting services, but more general studies in oceanography, polar sciences and climatology will also beneet from integration of measured and estimated parameters. This paper will address some of the problems with data integration and outline an approach for implementing a prototype MIS.