About NODCs

The National Oceanographic Data Centre NODC) is one of the three structural elements of IODE. The other two are the IODE Associate Data Unit (ADU) and the IODE Global Data Assembly Centre (IODE GDAC).

Until the late 1980s oceanographic data were mostly managed in a centralized national facility, i.e. a National Oceanographic Data Centre (NODC). Data consisted mostly of research cruise data or research projects, provided by research scientists to the data centres in delayed-mode. The delay between the observation and the submission to the data centre could be days to years depending on the data type. Often data would be submitted to the data centre only when the scientist had finished with it, often when a scientific paper was published. Today several countries operate distributed data systems with several data nodes.  In addition many ocean research and observation programmes and projects have the ability to establish data systems.

Mission of a National Oceanographic Data Centre

The mission of a National Oceanographic Data Centre is to provide access and stewardship for the national resource of oceanographic data. This effort requires the gathering, quality control, processing, summarization, dissemination, and preservation of data generated by national and international agencies.

The full range of data management tasks to be carried out by a national oceanographic data management “system” can be summarized as follows:

• receiving data from national, regional and international programmes collecting oceanographic data;
• verifying the quality of the data (using agreed upon standards)
• ensuring the long term preservation of the data and associated information required for correct interpretation of the data; and
• making data available, nationally and internationally.

National Responsibilities include:

1. Receiving data from researchers, performing quality control, and archiving;
2. Receiving data from buoys, ships and satellites on a daily basis, processing the data in a timely way, and providing outputs to various research and engineering users, forecasters, experiment managers, or to other centres participating in the data management plan for the data in question.
3. Reporting the results of quality control directly to data collectors as part of the quality assurance module for the system.
4. Participating in the development of data management plans and establishing systems to support major experiments, monitoring systems, fisheries advisory systems;
5. Disseminating data on the Internet and through other means (and on CD-ROM, DVD, etc);
6. Publishing statistical studies and atlases of oceanographic variables.
7. Providing indicators for the different types of data being exchanged in order to track the progress.

International Responsibilities include

1. Participating in the development of international standards and methods for data management through the IODE and JCOMM;
2. Participating in international oceanographic data and information exchange through the IODE and JCOMM, the Joint Commission for Oceanography and Marine Meteorology;
3. Assisting with data management aspects of global or regional programmes or pilot projects through IODE and JCOMM and in the framework of, inter alia, the IOC's Strategic Plan for Oceanographic Data and Information Management;
4. Operating as a data assembly and quality control centre for part of an international science experiment;
5. Operating regional, specialized or World Data Centre (WDC) on behalf of the international science community.
6. Participating in the bi-annual Sessions of the IODE Committee (*).

NODCs are designated by Governments of IOC Member States. Until 2013 there were no specific requirements related to the designation of an NODC. Recommended steps for the designation of an NODC are described in the "Guide for establishing a National Oceanographic Data Centre" (IOC Manuals and Guides No. 5)

In 2013 IODE published the "IODE Quality Management Framework for National Oceanographic Data Centres" (IOC Manuals and Guides No. 67). This promotes accreditation of NODCs according to agreed criteria and provides assistance to NODCs to establish organizational quality management systems.

(*) participation in Sessions of the IODE Committee are fully at the expense of the Member States as it is a Primary Subsidiary Body of the IOC. 

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Created on: Thursday, 10 April 2014 12:53

Last Updated on: Wednesday, 05 October 2016 09:28