Data Down Under: the Australian Ocean Data Network and Integrated Marine Observing System

Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS, www.imos.org.au) is a research infrastructure project to establish an enduring observing program for Australian oceanic waters and shelf seas. The observations cover physical, biological, and chemical variables to address themes of multi-decadal ocean change, climate variability and weather extremes, boundary currents and inter-basin flows, continental shelf processes and ecosystem responses. IMOS has developed a single integrative framework for data and information management, which allows discovery and access of the data by scientists, managers and the public, based on standards and interoperability. The IMOS Ocean portal (imos.aodn.org.au) provides free access to all IMOS data streams. This information infrastructure has been further developed to form the Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN, portal.aodn.org.au). AODN is working with Commonwealth and state agencies, universities and the offshore industry to rapidly become the primary point of access for marine data in Australia. The information infrastructure builds on recognised standards for data (e.g. netCDF) and metadata (conforming to ISO19115/19139), is based on a distributed network of data sources, uses open source tools (such as Geonetwork and Geoserver) and provides search, discovery and access to data through web services. Interoperability is the name of the game, and AODN/IMOS is a partner in the recently funded European Union Framework 7 project ODIP (Ocean Data Interoperability Platform) bringing together 10 European, 8 US, IOC-IODE and AODN/IMOS partners to further interoperability in marine data and information.