A Data Management System and Portal for Access to Ecological and Biogeochemical Ocean Data - BCO-DMO

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The Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO) was created to serve PIs funded by the NSF Biological and Chemical Oceanography Programs as a facility where marine biogeochemical and ecological data and information developed in the course of scientific research can easily be disseminated, protected, and stored on short and intermediate time-frames. The Data Management Office also provides research scientists and others with the tools and systems necessary to work with marine biogeochemical and ecological data from heterogeneous sources with increased efficacy. The BCO-DMO data management system is composed of a metadata database, the distributed client-server data system, and a Web browser interface with simple text-based and map-based user interfaces that provide access to the information and data available from the BCO-DMO repository. During the proposal period, the office will manage existing and new data sets from individual scientific investigators and collaborative groups of investigators, and will continue to make these available online. The office will work with principal investigators and other data contributors on data quality control; maintain an inventory and program thesaurus of strictly defined field names; generate metadata Directory Interchange Format records required by Federal agencies; ensure submission of data to national data centers; support and encourage data synthesis by providing new, online, web-based display tools; facilitate interoperability among different data portals; and facilitate regional, national, and international data and information exchange.Intellectual Merit: The Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office is providing integrated chemical, biological, and physical data collections from a number of large and intermediate programs, and individual projects. The data being served provide the scientific investigators with an opportunity to explore the complex and multifaceted datasets wherever they reside world-wide and to collaborate with colleagues in addressing pressing environmental questions, problems, and challenges that are exacerbated with the increasing pace of climate change. The opportunity and the challenge is to make the integration of these coordinated, and diverse data sets yield a deeper understanding of the workings of ocean ecological and biogeochemical systems than any single approach used alone. As the analysis of ocean processes becomes more and more sophisticated, multidisciplinary integration will also grow more complex. The BCO-DMO has become a fundamental component for information exchange without which the goals of existing and future programs cannot be met.Broader Impacts: The BCO-DMO collection of data sets contributed by researchers funded by NSF OCE Biology and Chemistry Programs is a publicly available resource accessible via the BCO-DMO website. It supports synthesis and modeling activities, reuse of oceanographic data for new research endeavors, availability of "real data" for teachers/students at K-12 and college level to use in their classes, and provides decision-support field data for policy-relevant issues. BCO-DMO outreach activities help to foster long-term collaborative partnerships between data management professionals and research investigators through participation in community training courses and workshops both National and International. Our participation in these activities also helps to reduce community barriers by fostering the sharing of ideas between synergistic but independent research. A key component in the development of interoperable data repository systems is adoption of cyberinfrastructure standards to enable exchange of data and information between distributed data systems. Exchange of knowledge at oceanographic and informatics meetings is an important mechanism by which standards development and adoption occurs. Because we are dedicated to the use of open-source and standards-based technologies, the BCO-DMO approach should prove useful to other disciplines.