Determining existing potential solutions for a Marine Recorder replacement

Tender description

3. Project Background Marine Recorder (MR) is an existing MS Access-based data management application for storing, managing, collating and disseminating standardised and aggregated data on marine benthic biodiversity. It was developed in the early 2000s to store data from UK Statutory Nature Conservation Body (SNCB) and Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) marine surveys, with coordination led by JNCC. Holding a variety of survey data in addition to biological records, such as substrate type, biotope, survey metadata, sampling methods, and stored against events (e.g. surveys, samples, replicates) this allows users to undertake analyses linking a variety of data types. It is currently used by a community of 10 "custodian" organisations, responsible for the collation and management of their own, and acquired third party data. The general use of the system is as tool for managing final data packages rather than as a lab information management system, whose aim is towards ensuring the quality assurance of "live" or "working" data.