ISDE History

The Irish Spatial Data Exchange started life as the Marine Data Exchange project in 2004, when the Marine Institute made an initial submission for funding to the Information Society Fund.

The project concept came about following experiences gained in data management programmes in the Marine Institute, the Geological Survey of Ireland and the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2004, the Marine Institute launched Marinedataonline.ie. This provided an online inventory of data holdings in the Marine Institute. It became apparent however that while this is a useful service that there is an assumption that users seeking marine related data would know where to look. While the Marine Institute holds significant amounts of marine data, so do the GSI, the EPA and 3rd level Education bodies. Similar issues exist when the EPA receives requests for 'environmental' data – it holds much of this data, but so too do the other agencies mentioned.

A refined Marine Data Exchange Proposal was submitted in March 2005 and funding for the project was approved in April 2005.

Software development was completed in December 2005. The system is now considered 'live' although the project was always intended as a proof of concept, and should largely be used with this in mind. A significan driver for the project has been to provide input to the Irish Spatial Data Initiative.

The original proposal to make use of the Reach Public Service broker has not been carried out as the Reach team were not in position to integrate given the number of other projects they have been carrying out. Discussions on the integration are currently underway.