The European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatory (EMSO; http://www.emso-eu.org) is addressing the next challenge in Earth-ocean science: how to coordinate data acquisition, analysis, archiving, access, and response to geohazards across provincial, national, regional, and international boundaries. Such coordination is needed to optimize the use of current and planned ocean observatory systems to (1) address national and regional public safety concerns about geohazards (e.g., earthquakes, submarine landslides, tsunamis) and (2) permit broadening of their scope toward monitoring environmental change on global ocean scales.

Best, M., P. Favali, L. Beranzoli, M. Cannat, N. Cagatay, J.J. Dañobeitia, E. Delory, H. de Stigter, B. Ferré, M. Gillooly, F. Grant, P.O.J. Hall, V. Lykousis, J. Mienert, J.M.A. de Miranda, G. Oaie, V. Radulescu, J.-F. Rolin, H. Ruhl, and C. Waldmann. 2014. EMSO: A distributed infrastructure for addressing geohazards and global ocean change. Oceanography 27(2):167–169, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2014.52.

Auffret, Y., J Blandin, D. Choqueuse, C. Compère, L. Delauney, J.-F. Drogou, P. Jegou, C. Leveque, J.-F. Rolin, and P. Valdy. 2014. Long-term sub-sea observatories: Comparison of architectures and solutions for infrastructure design, interfaces, materials, sensor protection and deployment operations. Chapter 8 in Seafloor Observatories: A New Vision of the Earth from the Abyss. P. Favali, L. Beranzoli, and A. De Santis, eds, Series: Springer Praxis Books, Subseries: Geophysical Sciences.
1. Favali, P., L. Beranzoli, G. D’Anna, F. Gasparoni, J. Marvaldi, G. Clauss, H.W. Gerber, M. Nicot, M.P. Marani, F. Gamberi, C. Millot, and E.R. Flueh. 2006. A fleet of multiparameter observatories for geophysical and environmental monitoring at seafloor. Annals of Geophysics 49:659–680.
2. Favali, P., R. Person, C.R. Barnes, Y. Kaneda, J.R. Delaney, and S.-K. Hsu. 2010. Seafloor observatory science. In: OceanObs’09: Sustained Ocean. Observations and Information for Society conference 2, Venice, Italy, September 21–25, 2009. J. Hall, D.E. Harrison, and D. Stammer, eds, ESA Publication WPP-306.
3. Favali, P., L. Beranzoli, M. Best, and EMSO Partners. 2014. EMSO—The European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and Water-Column Observatory: Transition from planning to implementation. Paper presented at the IEEE Oceans’14 Conference, April 2014, Taipei.
4. Monna, S., G. Falcone, L. Beranzoli, F. Chierici, G. Cianchini, M. De Caro, A. De Santis, D. Embriaco, F. Frugoni, G. Marinaro, and others. 2014. Underwater geophysical monitoring for European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatories. Journal of Marine Systems 130:12–30, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmarsys.2013.09.010.
5. Person, R., P. Favali, H.A. Ruhl, L. Beranzoli, J.-F. Rolin, C. Waldmann, R. Huber, Y. Auffret, M.N. Çağatay, M. Cannat, and others. 2014. From ESONET multidisciplinary scientific community to EMSO novel European research infrastructure for ocean observation. Chapter 20 in Seafloor Observatories: A New Vision of the Earth from the Abyss. P. Favali, L. Beranzoli, and A. De Santis, eds, Series: Springer Praxis Books, Subseries: Geophysical Sciences.
6. Priede, I.G., R. Person, and P. Favali. 2005. European seafloor observatory network. Sea Technology 46:45–49.
7. Ruhl, H.A., M. André, L. Beranzoli, M.N. Cağatay, A. Colaco, M. Cannat, J.J. Dañobeitia, P. Favali, L. Géli, M. Gillooly, and others. 2011. Societal need for improved understanding of climate change, anthropogenic impacts, and geo-hazard warning drive development of ocean observatories in European Seas. Progress in Oceanography 91:1–33, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pocean.2011.05.001.
8. Sgroi, T., S. Monna, D. Embriaco, G. Giovanetti, G. Marinaro, and P. Favali. 2014. Geohazards in the western Ionian Sea: Insights from non-earthquake signals recorded by the NEMO-SN1 seafloor observatory. Oceanography 27(2):154–166, http://dx.doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2014.51.

This is an open access article made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as users cite the materials appropriately, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate the changes that were made to the original content. Images, animations, videos, or other third-party material used in articles are included in the Creative Commons license unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission directly from the license holder to reproduce the material.