ARMADA: a marine data aggregator and visualisation tool to support management of Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Area

The ability to discover and access historical datasets is a significant challenge for many agencies charged with managing spatially defined marine areas. Unless data have been previously aggregated by (for example) method it is difficult to discover historic datasets as many of these have yet to be made available through the existing national data infrastructure. This need led to the development of the Australian Region MArine Data Aggregation (ARMADA) tool through the NESP Marine Biodiversity Hub partners. ARMADA provides a comprehensive snapshot in time of data available through individual research agency’s geoservers, providing government agencies, industry and other stakeholders a more complete listing and access biological and physical data within Australia’s national 

marine estate. While this prototype tool was developed to meet a specific user case (Australian Government Department of the Environment and Energy (DOEE) data identification for all biological samples that fall within the boundaries of an irregular shaped polygon, such as the boundaries of a Commonwealth Marine Reserve, Key Ecological Feature or Biologically Important Area) it has clear user benefits for any management or research agencies in identifying the spatial extent of historical research.

In developing this tool, the primary aims have been to meet a specific user need and to demonstrate/test the utility of a spatial data aggregation tool. While it appears there is a clear end user need, this tool does require ongoing support and development, and ideally will be incorporated into national data infrastructure such as the AODN network. Differences in software architecture and the challenge of getting research agencies to publish their data in compatible formats may limit immediate adoption by AODN, however, a clear recommendation from this work is that the Hub partners and AODN/IMOS work towards a single source for accessing this marine data in the future.