The European MAREGRAPH Project: Enhancing Marine Data Interoperability through Semantic Knowledge Graphs

The availability of accurate and up-to-date information on marine species—ranging from nomenclature and taxonomy to species occurrences—is fundamental for several stakeholders, from marine scientists to policymakers. Today, this information is provided by well-known authoritative systems, including the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), a comprehensive register of names of marine organisms and related information; Marine Regions, a register of georeferenced information on marine place names and areas; and the European Ocean Biogeographic Information System (EurOBIS), where species occurrences in European waters are recorded. These platforms ensure marine biodiversity data is accessible and interoperable, supporting various applications and use cases for fostering advancements in taxonomy, marine biology, ecology and environmental science. The MAREGRAPH project has the ambition to further increase the findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability of these foundational high-value datasets, by creating and publishing an open knowledge graph (KG) on marine biodiversity data through the semantic uplifting of the involved datasets, relying on the Semantic Web stack and its standards.