Joaquin Trinanes | USGS Science

USGS2021

Data management and interactive visualizations for the evolving marine biodiversity observation network

Assessing the current state of and predicting change in the ocean’s biological and ecosystem resources requires observations and research to safeguard these valuable public assets. The Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) partnered with the Global Ocean Observing System Biology and Ecosystems Panel and the Ocean Biodiversity Information System to address these needs through collaboration, data standardization, and data sharing. Here, we describe the generalized MBON data processing flow, which includes several steps to ensure that data are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. By following this flow, data collected and managed by MBON have contributed to our understanding of the Global Ocean Observing System Essential Ocean Variables and demonstrated the value of web-based, interactive tools to explore and better understand environmental change. Although the MBON’s generalized data processing flow is already in practice, work remains in building ontologies for biological concepts, improving processing scripts for data standardization, and speeding up the data collection-to-sharing timeframe.

Oceanography↗

USGS2010

NetCDF-CF-OPeNDAP: Standards for ocean data interoperability and object lessons for community data standards processes

It is generally recognized that meeting society's emerging environmental science and management needs will require the marine data community to provide simpler, more effective and more interoperable access to its data. There is broad agreement, as well, that data standards are the bedrock upon which interoperability will be built. The path that would bring the marine data community to agree upon and utilize such standards, however, is often elusive. In this paper we examine the trio of standards 1) netCDF files; 2) the Climate and Forecast (CF) metadata convention; and 3) the OPeNDAP data access protocol. These standards taken together have brought our community a high level of interoperability for "gridded" data such as model outputs, satellite products and climatological analyses, and they are gaining rapid acceptance for ocean observations. We will provide an overview of the scope of the contribution that has been made. We then step back from the information technology considerations to examine the community or "social" process by which the successes were achieved. We contrast the path by which the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has advanced the Global Telecommunications System (GTS) - netCDF/CF/OPeNDAP exemplifying a "bottom up" standards process whereas GTS is "top down". Both of these standards are tales of success at achieving specific purposes, yet each is hampered by technical limitations. These limitations sometimes lead to controversy over whether alternative technological directions should be pursued. Finally we draw general conclusions regarding the factors that affect the success of a standards development effort - the likelihood that an IT standard will meet its design goals and will achieve community-wide acceptance. We believe that a higher level of thoughtful awareness by the scientists, program managers and technology experts of the vital role of standards and the merits of alternative standards processes can help us as a community to reach our interoperability goals faster.

Conference Paper↗