Map-Based Portals for Marine Science Communication and Discovery: Report from July 2019 Workshop

Map-based portals are being increasingly recognised for their utility in marine science communication and data discovery. It is important that current, relevant and reliable marine ecological data is readily available to a wide-range of users including managers, scientists and the general public.

This report describes the outcomes of a Marine Biodiversity Hub workshop held in July 2019 that hosted a discussion on “Map Based Portals for Marine Science Communication and Discovery. Portal champions, representing 16 existing map-based web portals together with a range of end users, including marine park scientists and experts in spatial marine data came together to review and learn from the national experience with their experiences in both delivering these services but also being end users. . We captured the requirements from these different users through the narrative of “User stories”, which provides us with useful information of explanations of the different portal features written from the perspective of the end user. We mapped the synergies between existing services and using the “The Marine Data Landscape”, proposed by Tim Moltman, identified a variety of considered gaps and captured new suggestions for future developments, including an assessment on the priority and feasibility of these new initiatives.