Even the most flexible formats such as the IODE's General Format Three (GF3) requires redevelopment of existing systems or translators to be developed before it can be used.
To meet the Vision and achieve the objective of increasing the availability of data, there must be tools available to enable the development of a Virtual Data Centre. If this can be achieved, data managers will be in a position to support the marine data and information needs of the broad marine sector including the scientific community, industry and government for use in policy development and marine resource management.
The significant improvements in information technologies in recent years provide marine data managers with the opportunity to create this marine data framework. Such a framework will support the establishment of the virtual data centre and help support the software industry in developing marine applications.
5. Data Management Objective
The objective must be to structure data and information so that it can be seamlessly accessed and manipulated for a wide range of uses, including policy development, defence, shipping, marine engineering projects, mariculture, fisheries management, recreational and commercial fishing, coastal management, search and rescue, and education.
To reach this goal, a framework built on an object-oriented approach is required. This framework must be fully extensible, and also be able to access and use legacy data and applications. The framework must support the integration of diverse data from the physical, geological, chemical and biological fields and provide easy access to data in ways that support scientists, managers, commercial interests and policy makers.
6. Marine Data Management Issues
In order to develop the framework that will enable the creation of a Virtual Data Centre, a number of issues must be addressed. These issues include:
･Complexity of marine data structures
･Large data volumes
･Lack of conformity in data structures between different marine agencies
･Lack of conformity in data quality standards and requirements
･Multi dimensional nature of marine data
･Large base of existing but incompatible systems
Complexity of Marine Data - Marine data is inherently more complex than most land data and certainly more complex than most business data. Marine data is usually more expensive and more difficult to collect and frequently describes at least three sometimes four or more dimensions.
Large Data Volumes - Today, as a result of improving instrument technology such as multi-beam echo sounders, data can now be collected at rates approaching that of satellite data acquisition. While this is good news for the scientist, the data manager is now faced with the problem of managing extremely large databases in the terabyte range.
