MINKE will integrate key European marine metrology research infrastructures, to coordinate their use and development and propose an innovative framework of “quality of oceanographic data” for the different European actors in charge of monitoring and managing the marine ecosystems.

MINKE proposes a new vision in the design of marine monitoring networks considering two dimensions of data quality, accuracy and completeness, as the driving components of the quality in data acquisition. This new vision will be framed in a quintuple helix model of innovation, incorporating all the elements involved inthe monitoring network design:

• the context (ocean health), identifying the Essential Ocean variables (EOVs) as the key parameters to monitor;
• the civil society (NGO, Makers community, Social media and Citizen Science platforms) as the key actors to ensure data completeness;
• the academia researching new methods to ensure the accuracy and the global quality of the final products, developing tools for integrating the information of top-qualified oceanographic instruments and low-cost instrumentation;
• the industry improving the performance of the observations with new instrumentation, data-transmission systems and cost-effective technologies;
• the governments that provide the legal and socio-economic frameworks to develop the proposed network.

The present proposal, through the different Integration Activities (Networking, Transnational-Virtual Access and Joint Research), aims to lay the groundwork for creating the necessary synergies among the different involved actors in the quintuple helix model of innovation, creating a new community with complementary capabilities for Ocean & Coastal Observation, that will facilitate the transition towards a blue growth socio-economic system.