The AMRIT Project “Advance Marine Research Infrastructures Together” is building the foundations for a more interoperable and user-driven marine data ecosystem in Europe. Central to this mission has been an active process of stakeholder engagement, ensuring that the project’s outputs are designed with the community, rather than merely for it. Through a series of regional workshops, the project gathered input from key users across Europe to shape the tools being built and ensure they fit real operational contexts.
Connecting Developers and End-Users for Smarter Solutions
Interoperability and harmonised metadata are essential to make marine data easier to find, understand, and use. However, achieving this requires tools that reflect how scientists and operators work. The regional workshops created a bridge between AMRIT’s developers and the end-users, ensuring that the resulting systems, such as the AMRIT Dashboard, Notification Centre, and R/V Hydrology Tool, are intuitive, efficient, and aligned with existing workflows. This co-design approach strengthens user trust, avoids duplication with existing initiatives like EMODnet or Copernicus Marine, and paves the way for long-term integration within the European Ocean Observing System (EOOS).
The workshops were co-organised by AMRIT’s team, EuroGOOS and its Regional Operational Oceanographic Systems (ROOS). Participants included operators, scientists and data managers from across the European marine observing community, as well as representatives from national institutions and data centres. The AMRIT coordination and Scrum teams presented prototypes and gathered feedback for ongoing development.
Between October 2024 and June 2025, AMRIT and EuroGOOS hosted four regional workshops aligned with annual ROOS meetings:
- MonGOOS (Málaga, Spain, October 2024) –Introduced AMRIT’s objectives and gathered initial input on metadata needs.
- NOOS (Copenhagen, Denmark, October 2024) –Focused on alignment with national data systems and EU-level initiatives.
- Arctic ROOS (Brussels, Belgium, May 2025) – Explored metadata harmonisation and collaboration with existing infrastructures.
- BOOS (Sopot, Poland, June 2025) – Discussed metadata workflows, platform scalability, and sustainability planning.
A final online workshop with IBI ROOS was held on 18.11.2025.
Laying the Groundwork for Lasting Integration
The insights from these workshops are already shaping AMRIT’s next phase. As a first step, these results will inform all technical WPs to demonstrate the responsiveness of the project and the ability to address stakeholders' needs. The presentation of these results to the AMRIT partners and technical WPs leaders aims to transmit the concerns and challenges identified to properly address those in the development of AMRIT products and tools. In addition, the workshop’s results will be the foundation and guidelines to prepare training and communication materials aimed at operators and key stakeholders, as the materials foreseen in WP11 - Stakeholder Uptake of EOOS Tools & Services, in particular, Task 11.1 Training for MRI operators on EOOS tools/services. Under WP16, this feedback will guide the development of federated governance and sustainability mechanisms to ensure the tools and services continue beyond the project’s lifespan. By involving stakeholders from the start, AMRIT is laying the groundwork for long-term adoption of its outputs, strengthening interoperability across Europe’s marine data landscape, and contributing to a more coordinated, user-driven approach EOOS.
