Geoportals in marine spatial planning: state of the art and future perspectives

Geoportals have been employed to generate integrated information and support research and decisions on the sustainable development and preservation of natural resources. They provide a substantial contribution to the monitoring and management of biodiversity, ecosystems functionality, and global health. Here, we provide an overview of the potential application of geoportals linked to Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) to support stakeholders in marine science and facilitate the establishment of new geoportals for marine data. We analysed 147 geoportals and most of them were mainly equipped for global-scale processing. We noted an important increase of interest towards geoportals: from 710 in September 2005 to 1469 in October 2024. The European and Asiatic countries resulted the most representative regions increasing geoportal numbers and related queries. The continuous development, use, and improvement of geoportals will consistently support the decision-making process in MSP. Geoportals that are easy to access and query, and following the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data principles will substantially contribute to the exploration of the undiscovered parts of our planet, ensuring tools aimed to the safety of the oceans from hazards and climate changes, to sustainable ecosystem services (eg. energy and food consumption) and to effectively manage the ocean space. • Geoportals are crucial for Marine Spatial Planning. • We identified 147 geoportals on the marine realm focused on eight main research and development areas. • Interest in geoportals has increased exponentially in the last decades and mostly in the European and Asiatic countries. • Indications on future directions in the development and applications of geoportals are presented.