A Participative Tool for Sharing, Annotating and Archiving Submarine Video Data
Yann Marcon1, Renzo Kottmann2, Volker Ratmeyer3 and Antje Boetius1,4, (1)Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research, HGF-MPG Group for Deep Sea Ecology and Technology, Bremerhaven, Germany, (2)Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Bremen, Germany, (3)MARUM - University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany, (4)Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, HGF-MPG Group for Deep Sea Ecology and Technology, Bremen, Germany
Abstract:
Oceans cover more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface and are known to play an essential role on all of the Earth systems and cycles. However, less than 5 percent of the ocean bottom has been explored and many aspects of the deep-sea world remain poorly understood. Increasing our ocean literacy is a necessity in order for specialists and non-specialists to better grasp the roles of the ocean on the Earth’s system, its resources, and the impact of human activities on it. Due to technological advances, deep-sea research produces ever-increasing amounts of scientific video data. However, using such data for science communication and public outreach purposes remains difficult as tools for accessing/sharing such scientific data are often lacking. Indeed, there is no common solution for the management and analysis of marine video data, which are often scattered across multiple research institutes or working groups and it is difficult to get an overview of the whereabouts of those data.
The VIDLIB Deep-Sea Video Platform is a web-based tool for sharing/annotating time-coded deep-sea video data. VIDLIB provides a participatory way to share and analyze video data. Scientists can share expert knowledge for video analysis without the need to upload/download large video files. Also, VIDLIB offers streaming capabilities and has potential for participatory science and science communication in that non-specialists can ask questions on what they see and get answers from scientists. Such a tool is highly valuable in terms of scientific public outreach and popular science. Video data are by far the most efficient way to communicate scientific findings to a non-expert public. VIDLIB is being used for studying the impact of deep-sea mining on benthic communities as well as for exploration in polar regions. We will present the structure and workflow of VIDLIB as well as an example of video analysis.
VIDLIB (http://vidlib.marum.de) is funded by the EU EUROFLEET project and the Helmholtz Alliance ROBEX.
