Kemp

The main aims of this system are to provide scientific, diagnostic tools to enable analysis, evaluation and visualization of marine ecosystems. In the context of marine biodiversity research, a global monolithic view of data is not an appropriate solution. What is required is a flexible architecture that provides interoperability of information sources, and query and analysis capabilities for a diverse community of marine researchers. The middleware framework described, uses an adaptable, scalable knowledge base to accommodate data and semantic heterogeneity and provide geospatial analysis services. The knowledge base is also designed to accommodate relevant marine standards and classifications such as taxonomies of relevant species and more complex habitat classifications such as those embodied in the European Union EUNIS database. From the computational perspective we describe how the system supports: discovery of, and access to distributed, heterogeneous information sources; provides tools for representation, manipulation and visualization of marine data and is adaptable to enable data sources, semantic information and services to evolve according to the requirements of research communities.