1. Introduction
There has been a phenomenal change in the information technologies available to marine data managers in the past twenty years. Powerful desktop computers with a range of sophisticated data management, analysis and visualisation software have replaced the previous mainframe computers using punched cards. Today, there is a rich tapestry of computing hardware, applications and software tools to help us perform the difficult task of managing marine data. In general terms, marine data management is continually improving as a result of improvements in main stream information technology such as the introduction of relational databases, object oriented technologies, geographic information systems and more recently, the tremendous capabilities of the World Wide Web. These developments have provided capabilities only dreamed of ten years ago.
Many agencies in the marine community are taking advantage of these new information management technologies and building increasingly sophisticated systems to manage their data. But, do these systems provide the ability to effectively integrate and exchange data easily with other agencies? In general the answer is no. Most developments continue the process of building “isolated islands of information”. The use of new technologies is continuing to restrict our ability to easily share and exchange our data. The introduction of advanced information technologies is continuing to compound the problems that have faced marine data managers over the past 20 years.
2. The Future Vision
This situation needs to be addressed and a workable and acceptable solution is required. To provide this solution it is necessary to have a target, a Vision.
Data managers in particular and the IODE in general aim to make high quality marine data easily and quickly available in a readily accessible form to all the user community including other data centres. This is the objective of all marine data managers. To meet this objective the Vision must be to develop the ‘Virtual Data Centre’.
The Virtual Data Centre would comprise a large number of marine data centres linked via the Internet in a way that would be transparent or invisible to the user. This unified ‘system’ would hold most of the world's marine data and would provide users with a range of data sets and data products. It would include a number of tools to assist with the visualisation, analysis and modeling of data to help users generate additional products on demand.
The data would meet minimum quality standards and the databases would be updated in near real-time. Architecturally, the Virtual Data Centre would be comprised of a distributed system base on the Internet and its associated technologies. Contributing agencies including marine laboratories that collect data would be responsible for managing their own data in this Virtual Data Centre environment.
This is a complex and sophisticated objective but can it be achieved? In reality the underlying technologies needed to create this Vision are available to us already, the building blocks are already there. However, the marine data community needs to do a considerable amount of work to put these blocks into an appropriate order to create a working, integrated system for the marine community. This is the challenge for IODE and marine data managers in the future.
