COURSE PROGRAMME

INTRODUCTION MEETING

INTRO LECTURES TIME TABLE

Click HERE for virtual sessions (ZOOM link)

Introduction to Marine Data – Alan Deidun

LECTURE 1, Monday 2 March 2026, 5pm – 7pm (Central European Time)

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Key points of the lecture

  • Why do we need marine data?
  • How do we measure and model the sea?
  • Different types of marine data: physical, biogeochemical, ecological; models; observations (in situ + remote)
  • What is operational oceanography?
  • Technologies used to produce marine data
  • Temporal and spatial constraints in data collection and interpretation; how to measure and interpret data avoiding pitfalls
  • The value addition chain of data; downstream services and data product delivery

Reliable oceanographic data sources

Met-ocean data sets: climate, reanalysis, forecast and in situ data

– Alfredo Izquierdo Gonzalez

LECTURE 2, Thursday 5 March 2026, 5pm – 7pm (Central European Time)

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Key points of the lecture

  • Met-ocean data: types and characteristics
  • Types of products PHYS CMEMS
  • Types of products INSITU CMEMS
  • “Data lexicon”: Quality information document and product user man

Online Data Portals – Adam Gauci

LECTURE 3, Monday 9 March 2026, 5pm – 7pm (Central European Time)

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Key points of the lecture

  • What oceanographic data is freely available? How can this be accessed?
  • Demonstration of professional online data interfaces to visualise in near-real-time ocean data products
  • Portals from where numeric data derived from in-situ measurements, remote sensing, and forecasting models, can be downloaded
  • Demonstration of visualisation software including Panoply, the Sentinel Application Toolbox (SNAP), and QGIS, that can be used to process downloaded data
  • Simple data processing techniques to added-value products (such as colour composites, vegetation and water quality indices, etc…)

Introduction to Operational Modelling – Flávio Martins

LECTURE 4, Thursday 12 March 2026, 5pm – 7pm (Central European Time)

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Key points of the lecture

  • What is a model?
  • Transport of a property: Eulerian vs Lagrangian
  • Discretisation in space and time
  • Model limitations
  • Initial and boundary conditions
  • Downscaling
  • Types of models
  • Operational modelling cycle
  • Data assimilation, analysis and reanalysis
  • Model validation

An introduction to Europe’s in situ open data service by the European Marine Observation Data Network (EMODnet) – Conor Delaney

LECTURE 5, Monday 16  March 2026, 5pm – 7pm, (Central European Time)

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Key points of the lecture

  • Data management tools, principles and technologies deployed by EMODnet
  • DCO Data Sharing, Decade’s Data and Information Strategy and related initiatives

Accessing and transforming data – Sally Close

LECTURE 6, Thursday 19 March 2026, 5pm – 7pm (Central European Time)

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Key points of the lecture

  • Brief introduction to web scraping and API
  • Brief introduction to data wrangling
  • Interacting with data servers part 1 (openDAP)
  • Introduction to cloud storage and cloud computing

Fundamentals and examples of marine data analysis – Carlos Román Cascón

LECTURE 7, Monday 23 March 2026, 5pm – 7pm, (Central European Summer Time)

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Key points of the lecture

  • Instrumentation and sampling characteristics
  • Data analysis: basic statistics, climatological assessments, anomalies, correlation
  • Spatial analysis of data
  • Time series analysis: Fourier, harmonic, spectral and wavelet analysis
  • Some examples of marine data analysis

Managing and Processing (Big) Scientific Data – Peer Kröger, Daniyal Kazempour

LECTURE 8, Thursday 26 March 2026, 5pm – 7pm, (Central European Summer Time)

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Key points of the lecture

Managing (Big) Scientific Data

  • IT tools and systems
  • Relational Database Management Systems
    • Data model
    • Basic properties of transactions in RDMS
  • Geo-Information systems
    • Spatial, temporal, and spatio-temporal data models
    • NoSQL Databases
    • Data models
    • Cap-theorem (consistency and availability)

Processing (Big) Scientific Data

  • Data Preprocessing
  • Overview on Distributed Data Processing
    • Hadoop, map-reduce
    • Spark
    • Flink

Introduction to learning algorithms, neural networks and clustering – Hrvoje Kalinić

LECTURE 9, Monday 30 March 2026, 5pm – 7pm (Central European Summer Time)

Key points of the lecture

  • What is unsupervised learning?
  • Distinction between clustering and classification
  • Cluster properties and basic approaches to cluster analysis
  • Examples of some algorithm and applications
  • What is supervised learning?
  • Distinction between classification and regression problem
  • Learning algorithms and why are the introduced
  • Learning as an optimization problem. Gradient descent. Local optimum
  • Linear separability and complexity of neural network architecture
  • Simple (shallow) neural network implementation

Applying AI to Oceanography: case studies – Aleksandra Dudkowska

LECTURE 10, Thursday 02 April 2026, 5:30pm – 7:30pm, (Central European Summer Time)

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Key points of the lecture

Case studies and demonstration of the different AI/ML models used in Oceanography

Introduction to Python

INTRO TO PHYTON, Monday 6 April 2026, 5pm – 7pm, (Central European Summer Time)

Anaconda cloud – introduction

Intro 1 tutorial

Intro 2 tutorial

View Lecture Intro 1 – 2024

View Lecture Intro 2 – 2024

Phyton Folder

View Lecture 2025

Key points of the lecture

Session designed for beginners and those looking to refresh their Python knowledge.

  • Syntax
  • Variables
  • Data types
  • Basic operations
  • Loops
  • Conditional statements
  • Functions
  • Modules
  • Libraries

Quiz about material covered in the introductory lectures

QUIZ, Thursday 9 April 2026, 5:00pm – 5:45pm (Central European Summer Time)

Introduction to Physical Mobility in Malta – Adam Gauci

INTRO TO PRACTICAL SESSIONS, Monday 13 April 2026, 6pm – 7pm (Central European Summer Time)

BIP PRACTICAL SESSIONS

  • 10:00 – 11:00 Introduction to workshops
  • 11:00 – 20:30 Welcome and Ice Breaker
  • 9:00 Welcome (The Faculty authorities)
  • 9:10 – 12:00 Practical Session 1: Sea-level time series: detecting processes, stationarity and trends Frano Matić, Jadranka Šepić, (Alfredo Izquierdo, Nikola Metlicic, Marijana Balic)[1]
  • 12:00 – 13:00 break
  • 13:00 – 16 Practical Session 4 Flavio Martins, (Jesús Gómez-Enri, Adam Gauci) 
  • 16:15 – 17:15 Additional activity: video group David Fernando Ramirez Montano
  • 17:30 – 18:30 Master thesis invitation Jadranka Šepić, Adam Gauci, Frano Matić, Aleksandra Dudkowska
  • 9 – 12 Practical Session 3 Tomás Fernández Montblanc, Alfredo Izquierdo, Flavio Martins
  • 12:00 – 13:00 break
  • 13 – 16 Practical Session 2: Ocean Data Visualization and Analysis with Ocean Data View (ODV) Peter Matzerath, Aleksandra Cupiał, Marijana Balic
  • 13 – 14 BoS meeting (project mode details, open to all Lecturers) Alfredo Izquierdo, Flavio Martins, Frano Matić, Aleksandra Dudkowska
  • 14 – 16  BoS meeting – planning common research Alfredo Izquierdo, Jadranka Šepić, Adam Gauci, Frano Matić, Aleksandra Dudkowska
  • 16 – 17 Additional activity: Introduction to project mode Alfredo Izquierdo, Frano Matić, Aleksandra Dudkowska, Flavio Martins
  • 17 – 18  Additional activity: project mode teamwork Nikola Metlicic, Marijana Balic
  • 08:00 – 18:00 Field Trip
  • 9:00 – 12:00  Practical Session 5: Space to Seafloor – Computing Satellite Derived Bathymetry Adam Gauci, Tomás Fernández Montblanc, Jadranka Šepić
  • 12:00 – 13:00 break
  • 13:00 – 17:00 Practical Session 6: Oil Spill Detection from space with SENTINEL-1 Jesús Gómez-Enri, Frano Matić, Marijana Balic
  • 17:00 – 19:00 Additional activity, presentation for final assessment teamwork Nikola Metlicic, Marijana Balic
  • 9:00 – 12:00 Additional activity, presentation for final assessment teamwork Nikola Metlicic, Marijana Balic
  • 12:00 – 13:00 break
  • 13:00 – 17:00 Students’ presentations + Assessment Frano Matić, Jadranka Šepić, Alfredo Izquierdo, Flavio Martins, Adam Gauci,  Tomás Fernández Montblanc, Jesús Gómez-Enri, Aleksandra Dudkowska
  • 18:30 – 19:00 final Goodbye session
  • 09:00 – 11:00  Additional activity: project mode (teamwork)
  • Departure from Gdańsk

Any more questions? Feel free to send us an email!

For more info on the course please follow the details in the course website  or contact us through mdl@sea-eu.org