About EDS

EDS supplies a thematic search of environmental data within the island of Ireland, assists in identifying its suitability, and disseminates information about it.

During a search, EDS guides you via themes and sub-themes to a listing of environmental data sources, which satisfies the search criteria. EDS informs you what environmental data certain organisations hold, where to find it and how it may be made available to you. EDS offers you information that helps you to interpret how relevant the data is to your needs and how "current" it is. Importantly, it also tells you what restrictions (e.g. copyright, financial, legal) may be placed upon on that dataset and if that dataset may be readily given out, purchased or published. EDS offers you details of the Contact name of the person or organisation that is responsible for that dataset.

Currently EDS provides information about data sources that can be categorised under the environmental theme of "Water", and then grouped as appropriate under various sub-themes. It is proposed that EDS will be extended to include additional themes on air, waste, and nature conservation in the future.

Background

EDS is the product of a joint North South project to establish a Register for cataloguing environmental data sources in the island of Ireland as part of the environmental work programme of the North South Ministerial Council.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Environment & Heritage Service (EHS) used the concept of "Metadata" to deliver key information about environmental data sources. In simple terms Metadata is information about data. Such information includes critical details about a dataset; e.g., its Title, a description of what it is, what time span the data covers, what geographical extent the data covers, its accessibility, how it may be transmitted, who it may be obtained from.

The information which feeds EDS, was compiled from independent databases hosted by the EPA and EHS, in a way which permitted the key details of datasets to be described, listed and delivered within a user-friendly environment.