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Energy, Climate change, Environment

EMODnet-Physics a win-win cooperation with OceanOPS to improve performance monitoring for Ocean Observing Platforms, data and information systems

04 Mar 2021

The global ocean observing system (GOOS) delivers more than 1 million daily observations to a rapidly growing number of users and stakeholders, including most major ocean, weather, and climate prediction centers around the world. OceanOPS (formerly JCOMMOPS) acts as a focal point for implementation and operation of relevant GOOS platforms. The Centre which is located in Brest (France) is funded thanks to voluntary contributions from IOC/UNESCO and WMO Member States, through the marine observing programmes and panels such as Argo, DBCP, OceanSITES, GO-SHIP, SOT, GLOSS, OceanGliders.

The diversity of maturity level between networks and requirements on data and metadata management from multiple sources make the management of the ocean observing system in real time and delayed mode difficult to harmonize globally. Duplications and lack of interoperability are two important challenges faced by the Ocean Observing community today.

By aggregating the multiple data sources, EMODnet Physics is in the front line of these key data management issues and one of the main stakeholders to contribute to improve interoperability and reduce duplications.

By managing unique identifiers for each platform, enriching and quality controlling every metadata set related to the current and historical operations at sea (agencies involved, operators, sensors, ships, etc.), OceanOPS is producing a significant work toward the interoperability between the different systems and the reliability of the information delivered by the GOOS.

In close collaboration with OceanOPS, EMODnet Physics is connecting multiple data sources with the OceanOPS metadata repository thanks to the unique identification system managed by OceanOPS. This is automatically reducing the duplication issues related to multi data sources and increasing the quality of the information system developed by EMODnet Physics. At the same time, EMODnet Physics is connecting OceanOPS to networks that are not yet under its radar to continuously improve the monitoring of the Ocean Observing systems operating in the global ocean.

This win-win collaboration started in 2015 and has been growing continuously. The collaboration between the two organisations is now entering a new era for the improvement of the services delivered to the increasing and more and more demanding community of Ocean data users.

                                         Credit to EMODnet Physics