Data Delivery Requirements
The Crown Estate and Crown Estate Scotland require our offshore customers to provide their survey data to us throughout the lifetime of an Agreement. The requirements for delivering this survey data through the Marine Data Exchange are set out here and in the 'MDE Data Holding' document.
Note to User: Please find the Marine Data Exchange Data Holding document embedded below, detailing the requirements for providing data to Marine Data Exchange. This document can also be downloaded here.
The requirement for providing survey data to The Crown Estate and Crown Estate Scotland is set out within the data clause of the Agreement and so each Agreement should be referred to for specific definitions.
The Marine Data Exchange (MDE) is the system used to store, manage and disseminate offshore survey data provided to The Crown Estate and Crown Estate Scotland. A set of consistent standards and requirements ensure that this system is maintained to a high level with enhanced discoverability of data.
The data must be provided at a survey level, and contain all reports and datasets related to that survey or campaign, including report appendices and GIS shapefiles, and raw data where applicable. These survey deliverables must be sensibly structured into data and report packages, referred to as a 'Series', and described by a metadata record. A series is defined as a group of datasets and reports collected in relation to a survey or data collection campaign, linked by a common research question.
The Crown Estate requires MEDIN Discovery Standard metadata to be delivered for all Series. MEDIN metadata is used to link MDE series to the MEDIN Data Portal, improving their discoverability. The Crown Estate require all mandatory elements to be completed, with emphasis upon an accurate title, abstract, temporal and spatial extent, and relevant keywords from the following controlled vocabularies: MEDIN Parameter Discovery Vocabulary and TCE Development Phases.
Where appropriate, The Crown Estate will use the MEDIN data guidelines as a pro forma for quality control of data received. This means that, as a minimum, The Crown Estate expects that data provided contain all of the mandatory details identified by the appropriate MEDIN data guideline.
