Loose Integration of Local Information to Generate Collaborative Marine Science Knowledge

Introduction

Data collected during the course of oceanographic research expeditions have traditionally been archived close to the data originator: either in institutional or project based Data Assembly Centres (DACs) or on a national scale in the network of National Oceanographic Data Centres (NODCs) supported by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO’s International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE). This tradition led to the creation of several attempts to integrate the data from the DACs and NODCs either in portals or multinational data systems. Until recently, data were collected for one purpose, but research paradigms are shifting and expectations along with them for increased access to data and desire to integrate multidisciplinary data from disparate sources. While it is important to curate data close to the point of origin, it is important to 'set data free' and with sufficient documentation that the data can be interpreted accurately by others. A possible solution to providing sufficient documentation is through the use of Sensor Observation Services (SOS, http://marinemetadata.org/) which has its own Ontology Registry and Repository, with mappings from that resource to the NVS.