PRIMRE: Marine Energy Information Organized by Interoperable Data Systems

Abstract Marine energy – generating power from the movement of ocean water – is an emerging industry that can add to energy portfolios in areas where other energy sources are less viable. As a new industry working in a challenging environment, knowledge is critical to overcoming obstacles in the industry’s development. Many lessons can be learned from sharing experiences, outcomes, data, and information between device and project developers, researchers, regulators, suppliers, and others. However, these data and information are often inaccessible, siloed behind paywalls or corporate firewalls, or undiscoverable, lost on an obscure site. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Portal and Repository for Information on Marine Renewable Energy (PRIMRE) (https://primre.org) organizes information across seven interconnected knowledge hubs. Each knowledge hub has its own unique identity, structure, and purpose: the Marine and Hydrokinetic Data Repository (MHKDR) hosts datasets, Tethys hosts environmental documents, Tethys Engineering hosts technical documents, the Marine Energy Projects Database hosts deployment activities, Marine Energy Software hosts software, Marine Energy Atlas hosts geospatial data, and Teles to hosts development guidance, including standards and compliance. PRIMRE connects the metadata from each of these knowledge hubs through a marine energy metadata schema and a series of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), enabling them to programmatically access data and information from each other. Additionally, metadata from all seven knowledge hubs are combined into a centralized search on PRIMRE. The integrated search allows users to easily query, filter, and find content across all seven knowledge hubs simultaneously. The PRIMRE centralized search and supporting metadata standard help ensure that marine energy data and information are not only accessible and discoverable, but also machine readable and AI-ready. Using a Large Language Model (LLM), the PRIMRE team recently launched AskPRIMRE, a virtual research assistant that provides answers to user-provided questions about marine energy. More than an intelligent search, AskPRIMRE can answer questions about the origin of specific fields, the methodologies used to collect them, applicability to various marine energy concepts, and more. PRIMRE also connects with other marine energy data systems around the world to enable data sharing for universal and transparent access. The open access metadata schema is published on PRIMRE, allowing other marine energy data systems to incorporate data and information from PRIMRE’s knowledge hubs, or conversely, enabling others to be included in PRIMRE’s centralized search. The PRIMRE team is continuously expanding and improving PRIMRE and its knowledge hubs to better organize marine energy data and information. By making these data universally accessible and discoverable, PRIMRE helps the marine energy industry to overcome obstacles, improve outcomes, and innovate new technologies. PRIMRE is aimed at marine energy development; however the structure and interoperability can be considered as a model for other emerging sectors in the age of AI and data integration.