The German Alliance for Marine Research (DAM) aims to coordinate research data management in the field of marine research, taking into account existing as well as emerging research data infrastructures (e.g. the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI)), in order to promote innovation and data science. Research data management is understood as the basis for the application of modern analysis methods (AI, machine learning). To this end, DAM is committed to FAIRe (from Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-usable) and open-access expedition data of the German Research Fleet in the core area of data management and digitization. The initiative is supported by a recommendation of the German Council of Science and Humanities from 2010 (Recommendation on the Future Development of the German Marine Research Fleet), in which a considerable deficit of available expedition data was identified.

The previous project "Unterwegs" research data has achieved the status of a concrete showcase for the cross-institutional and cross-fleet provision of "Unterwegs" research data from large German research vessels according to the FAIR and Open Data principles. The core objective of the continuation phase applied for here is to comprehensively implement the recommendation of the German Council of Science and Humanities from 2010, related to the availability of expedition data of the German research fleet including medium-sized research vessels. This means making available as much expedition data as possible ("underway" research data as well as primary research data) according to the FAIR and Open Data principles. The requested work program includes two priorities:

The continuation and expansion of current activities on large research vessels and

The extension of activities to medium-sized research vessels.

In the subproject, the Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW) is primarily concerned with the analysis, planning and development of standards and tools (software) for CTD operation, CTD measurements and resulting data, which can ultimately be applied to all ships in the German research fleet. The main focus is on the steps CTD measurement and raw data generation, quality assurance of the measurements, processing of the raw data and validation, archiving and publication in PANGEA.

The goal of this subproject is to establish a software framework that is as generic as possible and that enables the standardization of CTD operation with subsequent automatic data processing and provision based on expert knowledge from the field of CTD measurements, even on medium-sized research vessels. For this purpose, software tools already developed within the pilot project have to be further developed, others partly newly developed, documented and made available in order to respond to the special requirements of medium-sized research vessels. Software and process optimization by increasing the number of (partially) automatic work and process steps will be achieved by iterative (further) development and by conducting test campaigns.