1) RITMARE is a large, multi-institutional Italian marine research project aiming to build a data management infrastructure to facilitate sharing of data across research communities. 2) Subproject 7 of RITMARE seeks to design an IT system that enables interoperability and data exchange without forcing a single model or centralization. Efforts have included developing a data policy, collecting researcher requirements, and creating tools and services. 3) While progress has been made in establishing nodes providing access to data and metadata, uptake by researchers has been less than expected due to insufficient technical support, lack of data-related incentives, and developing a data policy after the project began rather than at the outset.

1. Facing data sharing in a
heterogeneous research community:
lights and shadows in the RITMARE
project
RITMARE SP7
P. Carrara, C. Fugazza, S. Lanucara, S. Menegon,
A. Oggioni, F. Pavesi, A. Sarretta, P. Tagliolato, M. Zilioli
& F. Trincardi
FAIR Data Management, Florence, 14-15 November 2016

2. Reuse of marine research data: a benefit for society
4 november 1966: reanalysis of Venice flood data
Courtesy Fabio Trincardi, CNR ISMAR
Trincardi, F., A. Barbanti, M. Bastianini,
A. Benetazzo, L. Cavaleri, J. Chiggiato,
A. Papa, A. Pomaro, M. Sclavo, L. Tosi,
and G. Umgiesser. 2016. The 1966
flooding of Venice: What time taught
us for the future. Oceanography 29(4),
https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2016
.87.

3. Presentation schema
• RITMARE: the project
• Subproject 7 (building data infrastructure): goal and
philosophy
• Past actions and results
• Current activity
• FAIR principles and RITMARE: a comparison
• Critical conclusion

4. RITMARE: Italian project of marine research
 Publicly funded (MIUR)
 About 1500 researchers
 12 disciplinary communities (oceanography, ecology,
biology, geophysics, …)
 5 research institutions and 2 university consortia (CNR, OGS,
INGV, ENEA, SZN, CoNISMa, CINFAI)
 7 Sub Projects
Institutional stakeholders:
Civil Protection, Marina Militare, National Environmental Agency (ISPRA),
Regions, etc.

5. 5
Main goal:
building the data
management
infrastructure ->
interoperable
Subproject 7: RITMARE and its data
«… To design and create an IT infrastructure allowing to
coordinate and share data, information, processes generated
in the Project, in order to ease the interaction among
different systems, the exchange and reuse of project results
also from different , heterogeneous information systems
(interoperability) , without forcing practices and
technologies used by the participating communities.»
From Executive Programme, 2012

6. 6
Interoperability
To conceal project heterogeneity without
forcing a unique model / centralization
Technological interoperability
of geographic data
Syntactic
interoperability
Semantic
interoperability
Subproject 7: RITMARE and its data

7. 7
In order to
favour data exchange and open access ->
building a data policy for marine research data
Subproject 7: RITMARE and its data
How to leverage participants (researchers)
involvement?
T: Tech point of view: to be as close as possible to
researchers’ needs and habits, to ease the tasks, to adopt
jargons, … -> collecting requirements
DP: Policy point of view: from shared practices; to move
from background to foreground; to favour open movement
-> rules definition and data plan

8. Subproject 7: actions and results
RITMARE Data Policy
A document (open) defining DP rules in RITMARE
and proposing a governance
http://figshare.com/articles/RITMARE_Data_Policy
_document/1235546.
Effort to suggest different policies depending on
data tipology
Creation of a plan to check and inventory data and
products available from partners (background) and
created by them (foreground)
License awareness - suggestion

9. Subproject 7: actions and results
1. Rules for data/products usage apply, without any
difference, to both RITMARE community and external users
2. Each time data/products are used, producer’s citation is
mandatory and, if different, owner’s citation
3. Within 2 years from data/products generation, whoever
uses them for publication must check producer’s interest
(and/or owner’s) in participating as co-author
4. Starting from data/products generation, a time range
[MORATORIUM] is set, in which they are reserved to the usage
of producer (owner), who decides their usage mode
5. Raw data must be delivered with all ancillary information
necessary to reuse, independently on the values of parameters
which were the aim of data collection, (i.e. calibration files,
tools specifications, etc.)
6. Licenses or usage rules associated to background
data/products must be applied to them

10. 10
Subproject 7: actions and results
120 requirements collected from researchers
Definition of macro-requirements for marine data
1. Information on a geographic area To find if and which information exhist
on an area, plus how to obtain them
2. Tools for researchers’ collaboration Tools to ease interaction and
exchange among researchers to plan and/or co-ordinate experiments
and in-situ activities
3. Real time data management To access observations in Real Time - Near
Real Time and quality control processing before distribution
4. IT supporting facilities Helpdesk for IT support to domain researchers
about data and data management
5. Complex infrastructure solutions Hardware and software solutions to
allow synergies among processing infrastructures of different research
organizations
6. Advanced visualization Non-traditional and custom visualization of
project products in order to improve reuse by other researchers and/or
users

11. 11
Subproject 7: actions and results
Creation of an open sw suite to easily create and populate interoperable web services to
access data; to easily create metadata in standard profiles for finding data and sensors;
lifting interoperability / reuse promotion by semantic MD enrichment (towards semantic level
interoperability and constant update of MD items)
Local interaction
applications
SOS
WMSWFS
WCS
Local repositories and
standard services
SensorML
MD
RITMARE Portal :
Project intaraction applications
GET-IT is capable of kickstarting an
autonomous node in the infrastructure
for the collection, annotation, and
deployment of
both geographic and sensor data
Towardsotherstandardportals

12. Subproject 7: actions and results
RITMARE portal (lev 0)
12 new nodes to
access data
hosted by
independent
repositories

13. Subproject 7: actions and results
Node number Node
Number of resources
available
Web service
1 THREDDS Data Server ISMAR-VE 2 THREDDS
2 CNR THREDDS Catalog for RITMARE Project 15270 THREDDS
3 THREDDS Data Server ISAC CNR 814 THREDDS
4 GET-IT OGS 15 WCS
5 GET-IT IAMC Oristano 12 WMS-WFS
6 GET-IT ISMAR Lesina 31 WCS, WMS-WFS
7 GET-IT ISMAR Venezia 2 WMS-WFS
8 GET-IT ISMAR SOS 28 SOS
9 ICPSM SOS 13 SOS
10 ADRIPLAN 70 WMS-WFS, WCS
11 SHAPE Adriatic Atlas 371 WMS-WFS
12 GET-IT IREA Milano 60 WCS
TOTAL RESOURCES 16628

14. Subproject 7: actions and results
Macroarea Adriatico-Ionica
Mar Adriatico
Mar Ionio
Mar di Sardegna
Altro

15. Subproject 7: actions and results
1890-2008 (16)
1900-2009 (2)
1998-2008 (9)
2002-2004 (1)
2002-2011 (5)
2003-2010 (4)
Macroarea
Adriatico-Ionica
2009-2013 (2)
2009-2014 (1)
2011-2013 (1)
2012-2013 (2)
2013 (1)
2013-2014 (3)
RIFERIMENTI NON
UTILIZZABILI (48)
1890-2008 (7)
1965-2014 (1)
1978-2001 (1)
1978-2014 (1)
1992-2001 (1)
1992-2011 (1)
1994-2000 (2)
1995 (1)
1997 (1)
1999-2011
2000 (1)
2001 (3)
2002-2011 (1)
2004 (8)
2005 (10)
Mar Adriatico 2006 (9)
2006-2009 (3)
2006-2010 (2)
2007 (10)
2007-2009 (1)
2008 (9)
2008-2010 (1)
2009 (9)
2010 (13)
2010-2011 (1)
2010-2012 (1)
2011-2005 (3)
2011-2011 (1)
2012 (11)
2012-2013 (1)
2013 (1)
2013-2015 (15263)
2014 (2)
2015 (1)
2015-2016 (13)
RIFERIMENTI NON UTILIZZABILI (176)

16. Subproject 7: actions and results
Macroarea Adriatico-Ionica Mar Adriatico Mar Ionio
Physical Oceanography 5 15243 1
Chemical Oceanography 9 6 0
Geology 8 20 0
Geophysics 0 0 0
Coastal Systems 5 18 0
Ecosystems 25 43 0
Fishing and Aquaculture 3 17 0
Molecular Biology 0 0 0
Physical Oceanography/Geology 20 3 0
Ecosystems/Physical Oceanography 0 103 0
Ecosystems/Coastal Systems 6 21 0
Coastal Systems/Miscellanea 1 1 0
Ecosystems/Geology 0 1 0
Coastal Systems/Geology 0 3 0
Coastal Systems/Physical Oceanography 0 42 0
Coastal Systems/Fishing and Aquaculture 0 1 0
Ecosystems/Fishing and Aquaculture 0 3 0
Coastal Systems/Energy 0 1 0
Trasnsport network 4 9 0
Miscellanea 1 6 1
Energy 8 3 1
NO METADATA 0 54 0

17. Subproject 7: Current activities
• Researchers’ uptake not sufficient -> one year of support
• helpdesk;
• online facilities (FAQ, glossary, wiki pages, …)
• webinars on geodata, RITMARE software tools and
interoperable web services
• open data publication prize
• Helpdesk / support researchers in:
• preparing marine data for distribution through the infrastructure services and
other portals;
• installing necessary software tools, and in service population with (meta) data;
• analysing issues of communities novel to data infrastructures and offering
customised solutions;
• monitoring, updating and maintening the overall interoperable access portal with
new facilities.

18. FAIR principles and RITMARE data
GET-IT assures and facilitates metadata
editing, enriched by WoK references,
with links to vocabularies and onto terms
Discovery facilities in the RITMARE portal
(under construction)
GET-IT facilitates: creation of services
(standard, autonomous, independent)
and data population
RITMARE promotes a data policy
engagement and (open) licensing
Interoperability is the goal of RITMARE
infrastructure (see the portal)
NB interoperability of sensors and
sensed observations
NB vocabularies and ontologies
OGC standards are sustained by a
worldwide community
We’re testing persistent identifiers
Use of RDF MD with links to WoK to
assure MD content updating

19. Critical conclusion
RITMARE web site: www.ritmare.it
Data Policy doc:
http://figshare.com/articles/RITMARE_Data_Policy_document/1235546
GET-IT Starterkit: www.get-it.it
RITMARE Data Portal (v 0.0): http://portale0-sp7.ismar.cnr.it
Shadows of RITMARE: fewer success than expected, in particular in Italy
(international enthusiasm: H2020 ODIP2, eLTER)
Main reasons: tech enabling not sufficient; we built a DP during the project
(too late); there was no specific budget allocation for data; lack of (career)
incentives
FAIR proposes a data policy from the beginning,
suggesting resource allocation
This must be done!