The IRSI  unit has played a central role in establishing marine data management infrastructures, particularly in-situ, on a European scale for the past 10 years:

• Coordinator of the European research infrastructure (DG-Research) SeaDataNet, it has promoted the emergence of common procedures and practices for water column data (physical, chemical, biological),
• Work package leader within the Geo-Seas project (E_Infrastructure, DG-Research), it extended the SeaDataNet infrastructure to geophysical and geological data,
• Involved in several work packages (physics, chemistry, biology, hydrography, etc.) of the EMODnet (European Marine Observation and Data Network) initiative,
• The main operator of the in situ component of the Marine Core Services of Copernicus.

At the European level, the unit coordinates the SeaDataNet infrastructure, thus illustrating its intention to develop interoperability and synergy with existing national systems.  It is also an important player in preparatory actions for setting up the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) and the Data Collection Framework (DCF – Fisheries data) under the impetus of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries. They are also taking part in setting up the "Marine Core Services" via the MyOcean project under the GMES programme from the EC's Directorate-General Enterprise and Industry.

Potential developments:

• Relaunch of the E-BISS project with a more targeted objective: optical and acoustic imaging for biology, habitats and benthic microstructure?
• Expansion of the new CNES-Ifremer agreement for processing data from the SMOS satellite: addition of the maintenance of processing sequences, difficulty with workload plan.
• New Marinet proposal: IDM identified, upon recommendation from the Irish Marine Institute, as a laboratory experiment data manager, which constitutes a new field for IRSI .