Oceans 2.0: A Platform to Exploit Earth and Ocean Science Data

Over the past 15 years, Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) has built a large research infrastructure consisting of a complex set of sensor networks below and above the water line. The networks support hundreds of instruments and instrument types that are producing data 24/7 in near real-time. The integrated networks span different types of environments from coastal to deep ocean basin, from polar to land-based settings and support large research projects in disciplines as diverse as marine biology, geophysics and seismology, oceanography, climate change and even particle physics.

The combined output of all the instruments and sensors is vast amounts of data that are accumulating in the archive and continuously increasing in size. This increase is challenging researchers who need to exploit the data to increase our understanding of the world we live in. As many of the researchers in science disciplines supported by the ONC infrastructure were not used to dealing with large data volumes, we had to provide tools early on to not only find and access data, but also to tackle the lack of big data exploitation proficiency within those communities.

This contribution will present the structure and tools that have been put in place to improve the access and exploitation of the data through:

- search tools and datatype-specific visualization tools, including video, audio and more complex multi-dimensional streams;

- the integration of searchable annotations to highlight or describe data stream content or note specific events affecting instruments data collection;

- the integration of automated (AI) or manual (crowdsourcing) tools to provide such annotations;

- the establishment of compute environments, colocated with the data, to allow for effective processing of data through the use of a public and standardized API.

The extensive metadata supporting structure will also be described, together with the next steps in our continuous improvement approach. All those features are available under data.oceannetworks.ca/.