BODC joins the SeaDataNet Virtual Data System

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC), with an initial contribution of more than 10,000 data series, has joined 24 other SeaDataNet partners actively providing data through the SeaDataNet Virtual Data System. The system is based on an index, the Common Data Index (CDI), which is populated with ISO19115-based metadata records to describe data stored in either netCDF or a simple ASCII format.

SeaDataNet partners in Europe ©

The CDI is searchable through a portal interface, which provides a range of filtering options to identify data (profile, time series or trajectory) of interest that may be added to a 'shopping trolley' for subsequent delivery.

Most data in the system are freely available under the terms and conditions of the SeaDataNet licence but some may require negotiation with the data owners before they can be released. User registration, which includes agreeing to the SeaDataNet licence, is mandatory.

The SeaDataNet partnership brings together 49 major European institutes and marine data centres from 35 countries in and around Europe. These include

• 40 National Oceanographic Data Centres and Satellite Data Centres — representing the backbone of the marine data and information infrastructure
• Research laboratories and modelling centres — experts in the development of value-added products
• Four International Organisations

They manage large sets of data, originating from their own institutes and from other parties in their country, using a variety of data management systems and configurations.

Oceanology International 2010

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) will be participating in the forthcoming Oceanology International event (Oi10). This takes place from 09-11 March 2010 at ExCeL London, the international exhibition and conference centre in London’s Docklands.

Oceanology International is the world’s premier meeting place for the marine science and ocean technology community. Exhibits will include the latest innovations from a huge selection of marine technology suppliers, and the event will also include a conference, visiting vessels and live demonstrations.

BODC stand at OI 2008.©

BODC will have its own stand (L250), in the ‘Next generation UK marine science’ grouping. We will focus on

• Online data search and delivery
• Latest projects e.g. GEOTRACES
• End-to-end data management
  

Come and visit us and pick up a BODC brochure, a free GEBCO poster (showing the GEBCO world map) and, new for 2010, a BODC badge!

Download a floorplan of the stands at Oi10 (751 KB)

BODC request (ASCII) format — your opinion

Data standardisation, in terms of both parameters and file format, is essential in professional data management.

BODC distributes data in a variety of standard formats. One of these, our BODC request (ASCII) format, has been in existence since the early 1980s. It comprises several lines of fixed-length header information (basic metadata) followed by the data cycles (and associated quality control flags) listed one per line.

BODC request (ASCII) format — change required ©

Until now we have refrained from changing this standard, as we were aware that our regular users had developed code for automatic data handling. Increasingly, however, the header design is limiting the information we need to present as well as being out of sync with standards elsewhere.

As part of our continuing commitment to improve our service to the marine community we feel that now is the time to consider a major update to our ASCII data format and we would value your opinion.

Such a change may cause inconvenience so we want to provide you with an opportunity to comment before we embark on an update. We would be pleased to hear your comments. When contacting us, please include information on the software you regularly use with this data format. This will help us tailor the design change to your needs.

New National Oceanography Centre (NOC) covers marine science from the coast to the deep ocean

A new, national research organisation that will work in partnership with the UK marine research community to deliver integrated marine science and technology from the coast to the deep ocean goes live from 1 April this year.

The National Oceanography Centre (NOC) will be formed by bringing together into a single institution NERC-managed activity at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) and the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL) in Liverpool.

The NOC will work in close partnership with the wider marine science community to create the integrated research capability needed to tackle the big environmental issues facing the world. Research priorities will include the oceans' role in climate change, sea level change and the future of the Arctic Ocean.

Integrated research — to tackle the big environmental issues facing the world. ©

A major element of the new approach will see the designation of a set of Partners of the NOC — comprising research institutes and key university groups — working collaboratively to support world-class strategic research, technology development and training the scientists of the future. Together with a wider group of Associates, these organisations will form the NOC Association, sharing in the delivery of a community developed strategy for marine science.

The NOC will have a key role in providing national capability to meet the needs of the whole UK marine research community including Royal Research Ships, deep submersibles and advanced ocean technologies. It will also be home to the global mean sea level data archive, the UK’s sea level monitoring system for flood warning and climate change, the national archive of subsea sediment cores and the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC).

How does this affect BODC?

As a national facility for storing and distributing marine data this initiative provides a strong framework to further our commitment to act for the entire community. We provide a resource for science, education, government and industry.

We are working hard to improve our data services and the way in which you can access and download data and information from our web site. For example, there are almost 68,000 data series available online from the National Oceanographic Database (NODB) 'online shopping' facility, with the number typically increasing at about 1,500 a month. This opens the way to the secure delivery of BODC's data holdings via various external data portals.

Open Service Network for Marine Environmental Data (NETMAR)

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) is participating in the Open Service Network for Marine Environmental Data (NETMAR) programme, which will help provide a framework for marine environment data portal harmonisation and interoperability across Europe.

The objective is to provide a software toolkit for building data portals in a consistent manner. The toolkit will be developed through the use of emerging web standards, such as chained Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Services.

An example of a service chain ©

The end product will be configurable by user communities interested in developing a data portal and will offer search, download and integration tools. Further processing of data will also be available in order to provide derived products suitable for decision making in the marine environment community.

NETMAR is a European Union Framework 7 funded programme, which will bring together seven organisations from four countries to achieve its goal. It starts in February 2010.

What is our role?

In order to make the resulting portals truly interoperable, NETMAR requires a detailed definition of the services being called and the data requested. This will be achieved through the development of a multi-domain and multilingual ontology of environmental data and information services, to allow searches across human language and scientific domains.

BODC, building on the experience of the Enabling Parameter Discovery and NERC DataGrid (NDG) projects, will be involved in the development of these semantic web ontologies.

This will allow 'smart discovery' when searching for data. For example, searching on the word 'precipitation' or 'précipitation' in a data portal would return all data labelled with, say 'rain', 'pluie', 'snow' or 'neige'.

New GEBCO bathymetric grids released

Announcing new releases

• A new release of the GEBCO_08 Grid is now available to download — it includes version 2.23 of the International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO).
• A 'Source Identifier' Grid to accompany the GEBCO_08 Grid is also available. This describes the GEBCO_08 Grid — identifying which grid cells are based on bathymetric soundings or grids and which contain predicted depth values.

The GEBCO_08 Grid overlain by the 'Source Identifier' Grid ©

The General Bathymetric Chart of the Ocean (GEBCO) community aims to provide the most authoritative, publicly-available bathymetry for the world's oceans. BODC maintain and distribute gridded bathymetric data sets on behalf of the GEBCO community. These are

• The GEBCO One Minute Grid — a global one arc-minute grid, largely based on the most recent set of bathymetric contours contained within the GEBCO Digital Atlas. Released in 2003 and updated in 2008.
• The GEBCO_08 Grid — a 30 arc-second interval global terrain model, largely generated by combining quality-controlled ship depth soundings with predicted depths between the sounding points guided by satellite-derived gravity data. Released in January 2009.

You may opt to download data for a user-defined area or the complete global file(s).

'Online shopping' for data

In line with our goal to provide direct access and online delivery to all data holdings, BODC announces a major enhancement to our data request service.

The new release of the 'All data series' facility now provides online delivery for data (~ 60,000 series) held in the National Oceanographic Database (NODB). This encompasses physical, geophysical, chemical and biological measurements.

'Shopping' for data ©

The enhancements enable

• 'anonymous' searching — search prior to registration or log in.
• 'online shopping' — add data to a basket and check out your request.
• extra choice in data file formats.
• secure access control — authentication and authorisation.
• auto-delivery of approximately 40,000 data series to academic users, with around 12,500 accessible to everyone.
• auto-delivery of restricted data series to users with the correct credentials.
• user request tracking and an auto-download facility.

This opens the way to the secure delivery of BODC's data holdings via various external data portals. A demonstration of the new functionality is available for you to view.

We are committed to improving our data services and your experience of our web site. Work is continuing to bring this functionality to our other data facilities and to enable online access to additional data.