The Malta Blue Pages is an internet-based directory system for ocean & marine data and information, targeting to establish a single-point online reference, access and repository for a number of marine data sources and descriptions in the field of marine environmental and oceanographic data in Malta .
Serving as a marine data bank and promoting data management practices according to established international standards, the Malta Blue Pages contains different sources of datasets, data catalogues and data inventories, providing a comprehensive information website on local marine professionals and local marine-related projects, rendering such initiatives more visible as well as making results and derived marine data more accessible and presentable in useful form for a wide range of end-users.
Keys to the success of marine-related research initiatives and to an effective support of marine assessments, policy formulation and environmental management are the speed and the ease with which oceanographic and marine data & information can be identified, located, accessed, exchanged and used.
For a more effective and integrated use, such data & information needs to have a consistent data quality level, and transcoded into common or compatible formats. The main scope of the Malta Blue Pages is precisely to bring local datasets together in a coherent manner to allow their integrated access, management, retrieval and dissemination.
The Malta Blue Pages is a project of the Physical Oceanography Unit of the IOI-Malta Operational Centre at the University of Malta , the local entity responsible for supporting oceanographic data management practices and the local focal point for the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) / International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE).
