Ocean Data Interoperability Platform (ODIP): developing a common framework for marine data management on a global scale

As marine research becomes increasingly multidisciplinary in its approach there has been a corresponding rise in the demand for large quantities of high quality interoperable data. A number of regional initiatives are already addressing this requirement through the establishment of infrastructures to improve the discovery and access of marine data. Projects such as Geo-Seas and SeaDataNet in Europe, Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R) in the USA and IMOS in Australia have implemented local infrastructures to facilitate the exchange of standardised marine datasets. However, so far each of these regional initiatives has been developed to address their own requirements and independently of other regions. To establish a common framework for marine data management on a global scale these is a need to develop interoperability solutions that can be implemented across these initiatives.

Through a series of workshops attended by the relevant domain specialists, the Ocean Data Interoperability Platform (ODIP) project will identify areas of commonality between these regional infrastructures and use these as the foundation for the development of a number of prototypes to demonstrate interoperability between existing e-infrastructures. These prototypes will be used to underpin the development of a common approach to the management of marine data which can be promoted to the wider marine research community with a view to expanding this framework to include other regional marine data infrastructures.

ODIP is a community lead project that is currently focussed on regional initiatives in Europe, the USA and Australia. It is supported by parallel funding from the responsible agencies from each region. The European component of ODIP includes 10 partners from 6 European countries and is funded by the EU Framework 7 programme. The US participation in the project is being supported through a supplement from the NSF for the R2R project, and the Australian contribution is being sponsored by the Australian government.

Further project details are available on the ODIP website: http://www.odip.org