Instead of downloading EMODnet data to your local machine before using it for your application, you can also access data directly from the web into your data analysis environment. In this tutorial, we will use the Python programming language to access EMODnet map images, data and metadata.
The EMODnet data portals allow web acces to map images, data and metadata through Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Services. This is a set of standards which allow to transfer geospatial data and metadata over the web. We will show following services available from EMODnet:
-
Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW): Allows you to search the catalogue of metadata to find the dataset you are looking for.
-
Web Map Service (WMS): Allows you to download geo-referenced map images.
-
Web Feature Service (WFS): Allows you to download geospatial vector data.
-
Web Coverage Service (WCS): Allows you to download geospatial raster data.
For an introduction to OGC web services and a full list of URL's you can access the web service documentation repository on GitHub. The exercises below cover some specific examples of how to acces and search for the data you require for your applications. You are free to use and modify this code in your own work.
The tutorial exists of four parts:
- Part 1: Search through metadata using the OGC Catalogue Service (CSW)
- Part 2: Visualize data using OGC Web Mapping Service (WMS))
- Part 3: Subset and download data using OGC Web Feature and Coverage Services (WFS/WCS)
- Part 4: Create interactive maps using OGC Web Mapping Tiles Services(WMTS)
