Maritime Resource Enablers
FUNDING BODY: NATO ALLIED COMMAND TRANSFORMATION
The aim of the MARE project is to facilitate the sharing, exploitation, and repurposing—within the Alliance and across multiple domains—of the vast datasets generated by the CMRE’s research activities. The software developed under this project exploits AI and machine learning. All project work follows an Agile methodology, with tasks continuously prioritised and executed based on input from stakeholders.
In 2025, the CMRE Data Catalogue was declared operational on the NATO Software Factory (NSF) cloud and on a public cloud environment, thereby enabling full accessibility to NATO and national users external to CMRE, and the first users already on-boarded. Additionally, the implementation of robust CMRE Data Governance processes supported the coordination and prioritisation of data management activities, guided by key performance indicators.
Data Mesh
FUNDING BODY: NATO ALLIED COMMAND TRANSFORMATION
The Alliance Data Sharing Ecosystem (ADSE) for defence and security supports the implementation of NATO’s digital transformation and its efforts in rapidly adopting dual-use technologies. ADSE leverages existing capabilities across the NATO Enterprise, Allied government agencies, industry and academia, and other key stakeholders to enable governed, repeatable data exchange and exploitation across organizations, NATO domains—land, maritime, air, cyber and space, and security boundaries.
In February 2025, the North Atlantic Council approved the Data Strategy for the Alliance (DaSA), emphasizing NATO’s commitment to leveraging data as an enduring strategic asset, driving sustainable battlespace advantage and business efficiency. The DaSA sets ambitious targets focusing on data curation, governance, and workforce skills, thereby supporting the delivery of an Alliance data-centric governance programme.
The ADSE pilot phase in 2025 focussed on public and unclassified data to support four priority areas: the security of critical undersea infrastructure (CUI); geospatial awareness; information environment assessment, and maritime situational awareness. As part of this ADSE pilot phase, ACT in collaboration with CMRE developed the ADSE Data Mesh, a data-centric platform enabling data producers to publish data products enriched with metadata and classification level, and data consumers to discover and request access to those products. Policy is enforced consistently through identity and authorization services. The purpose of the Data Mesh platform is twofold: firstly, to prove that governed sharing can happen at pace in a coalition environment without sacrificing data-owner control; and, secondly, to generate reusable patterns—in terms of metadata structures, access models, lineage practices and operating procedures.
The ADSE Data Mesh platform was deployed and tested during the Portuguese Robotic Exploitation Prototyping Maritime Unmanned Systems (REPMUS) 25 and NATO DYNAMIC MESSENGER (DYMS) 25 exercises conducted in the Atlantic littorals west of Setubal and the Tróia peninsula in September 2025. Under realistic conditions, the ADSE Data Mesh successfully operated as a practical and effective enabler of federated, policy-driven data sharing in a complex multinational environment. The platform progressed from initial setup to full operational status, supported over 150 users and more than 100 capabilities, and facilitated the publication, discovery and controlled access of hundreds of mission-relevant data products across multiple domains.
Pilot Data Catalogue
FUNDING BODY: NATO SHAPE
The Alliance Data Sharing Ecosystem (ADSE) for defence and security supports the implementation of NATO’s digital transformation and its efforts in rapidly adopting dual-use technologies. ADSE leverages existing capabilities across the NATO Enterprise, Allied government agencies, industry and academia, and other key stakeholders to enable governed, repeatable data exchange and exploitation across organizations, NATO domains—land, maritime, air, cyber and space, and security boundaries.
In line with NATO’s ADSE initiative, SHAPE staff recognised a critical need to improve the management and exploitation of data collected from multiple domains and sources in order to realise seabed-to-space multi-domain situational awareness at the military strategic and operational levels within Allied Command Operations (ACO).
Following an initial project definition study, CMRE IT staff delivered to SHAPE a pilot SHAPE Data Catalogue implemented on the cloud-based NATO Software Factory (NSF). The SHAPE platform was based on the CMRE’s own proven Data Catalogue, modified to be fully aligned with NATO’s Data Centric Reference Architecture (DCRA). The SHAPE Data Catalogue hosts metadata about data and data services, and supports SHAPE staff with the decentralized but federated discovery of data assets across ACO.
