MARINE REMOTE-SENSING INFORMATION-SYSTEM (MARSIS) - A CONCEPTUAL DESIGN

Remote observations of the sea produce large quantities of data, which must pass through several levels of processing, requiring special facilities and expertise, before reaching the end user. As a consequence, most marine remote-sensing data available at this time are not fully used because the average potential user does not have the means or competence to do so. These information-management problems could be eased through the development of a Marine Remote-Sensing Information System (MARSIS), capable of delivering value-added data sets both according to standard statistical and dynamical procedures and according to specific user requests. A regional MARSIS Centre is envisioned as the nodal point of a distributed information system, which includes three basic modules, devoted respectively to processing, management and communication, as well as a dedicated knowledge-based system connecting the modules themselves to original data repositories and final users. The MARSIS concept has been designed to enable the full exploitation of oceanographic data, and to lead to the development of future oceanological forecast services.