Die Kuste, 81 (2014), 29-43 
30 
Contents 
1 Introduction 30 
1.1 Motivation for a new data infrastructure 31 
2 The MDI-DE network 34 
2.1 Partners in the German coastal zone 34 
2.1.1 Coastal engineering and coastal water protection 34 
2.1.2 Marine environmental protection 35 
2.1.3 Marine nature conservation 36 
2.1.4 Scientific accompanying research 36 
2.1.5 Sustainable platform for conceptual and technical operation 36 
2.2 Technical infrastructure 37 
3 Metadata and spatial data from die German coastal zone 38 
3.1 Metadata elements 38 
3.1.1 The German coastal zone metadata profile 39 
3.2 Web services 40 
4 The MDI-DE Web portal 40 
5 Conclusions 41 
6 Acknowledgements 42 
7 References 42 
1 Introduction 
The marine data infrastructure for Germany MDI-DE has been conceptually developed 
and technically implemented in die period from 2010 until 2013 when funding was pro 
vided by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF. A total of 11 Federal 
and State agencies were involved which are responsible for coastal engineering and 
coastal water protection, marine environmental protection, marine nature conservation 
and accompanying scientific/technical research. A total of 12 scientists have been work 
ing on die integration of coastal and marine data. 
The project aimed at providing spatial data and information from the mentioned areas 
of responsibility for policy, economy and the public which could be accessed tiirough 
a central Internet portal www.mdi-de.org (LehfeldT und MELLES 2011). Metiiods and 
technologies have been developed and implemented in order to meet national and inter 
national reporting obligations. Lead partners were the Federal Waterways and Engineer 
ing Research Institute, Hamburg Office, BAW, die Federal Maritime and Hydrographic 
Agency Hamburg BSH and the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, Vilm Office, 
BfN. 
The search for data, data products and their use is supported.by using metadata and 
Web services. The MDI-DE assists authorities in the German coastal zone in fulfilling 
their reporting requirements with respect to the EU Framework Directives INSPIRE, 
Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe, 2007/2/EC (European Parliament 
and Council 2007a) and MSFD, European Marine Strategy Framework Directive,