EDMED, initiated by the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) in 1991 within the EU Marine Science and Technology (MAST) framework, is a comprehensive reference to the marine data sets and collections held within European research laboratories, so as to provide marine scientists, engineers and policymakers with a simple mechanism for their identification. It has established itself as a European standard for indexing and searching data sets relating to the marine environment.
It covers a wide range of disciplines including marine meteorology; physical, chemical and biological oceanography; sedimentology; marine biology and fisheries; environmental quality; coastal and estuarine studies; marine geology and geophysics; etc.
Data sets are described in EDMED irrespective of their format (e.g. digital databases or files, analogue records, paper charts, hard-copy tabulations, photographs and videos, geological samples, biological specimens etc). Currently, EDMED describes more than 4000 data sets, held at over 700 Data Holding Centres across Europe. Entries are prepared by institutes and collated by SeaDataNet partners who are responsible for populating and maintaining their national directories. These national directories are combined to provide a single centralised system managed by BODC.
EDMED is one of the SeaDataNet metadata services. These give overviews of marine organisations in Europe and their engagement in marine research projects, managing large datasets, and data acquisition by research vessels and monitoring programmes for the European seas and global oceans.