The vast scale of the
oceans
The ocean is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of Earth. The ocean is conventionally divided into large bodies of water, which are also referred to as ''oceans'' (the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Antarctic/Southern, and ...
, the difficulty and expense of making measurements due to the hostility of the environment and the internationality of the marine environment has led to a culture of
data sharing
Data sharing is the practice of making data used for scholarly research available to other investigators. Many funding agencies, institutions, and publication venues have policies regarding data sharing because transparency and openness are consid ...
in the
oceanographic
Oceanography (), also known as oceanology, sea science, ocean science, and marine science, is the scientific study of the ocean, including its physics, chemistry, biology, and geology.
It is an Earth science, which covers a wide range of top ...
data community. As far back as 1961
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...
's
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) set up IODE (International Oceanographic Data Exchange, subsequently renamed International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange to reflect the increasing importance of metadata) to enhance
marine research, exploitation and development by facilitating the exchange of oceanographic data and information.
Traditionally, oceanographic data exchange was based on manual transactions involving delivery of physical packages of data on
magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnetic ...
,
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains computer data storage, data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold b ...
or more recently by electronic
FTP
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...
transfer. However, the increasing need of
climate scientists for regional or global data syntheses to support their modelling activities requires automation of the data exchange process. Consequently, oceanographic data managers are developing 'virtual
data centres' to support the distribution of data through software agents.
Distributed data systems are critically dependent on machine-readable metadata to provide information on such issues as physical access protocols and semantics of the data. It is essential that this
metadata
Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
* Descriptive ...
conforms to agreed standards to prevent the computing paradigm of '
garbage in, garbage out
In computer science, garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) is the concept that flawed, biased or poor quality ("garbage") information or input (computer science), input produces a result or input/output, output of similar ("garbage") quality. The adage ...
' blighting automated data exchange. for example if a data description of 'temperature' were allowed it could lead to the merging of sea temperature data from one centre with air temperature data from another.
Many of these standards are community based, such as the CF conventions developed for
global climate model
A general circulation model (GCM) is a type of climate model. It employs a mathematical model of the general circulation of a planetary atmosphere or ocean. It uses the Navier–Stokes equations on a rotating sphere with thermodynamics, thermod ...
ling. Significant progress documenting these informal standards leading to exposure and encouragement of best practice has been made by the Marine Metadata Interoperability project.
However, if the oceanographic community is to emulate the success of the spatial data community in the development of data
interoperability
Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader de ...
then a more formalised standards development framework is required. To this end an ocean data standards review, development and publication infrastructure is being developed under the auspices of the Joint
WMO-IOC Technical Commission on Oceanography and Marine Meteorology (JCOMM).
Joint WMO-IOC Technical Commission on Oceanography and Marine Meteorology
/ref>
References
The Ocean Data Standards website
{{reflist
External links
Ocean Data Standards
Oceanography