Global marine data to become unified, accessible
From the post:
An international project aims to enable the next great scientific advances in global marine research by making marine data sets more easily accessible to researchers worldwide.
Currently different data formats between research centres pose a challenge to oceanographic researchers, who need unified data sets to get the most complete picture possible of the ocean. This project, called ODIP II, aims to solve this problem using NERC’s world-class vocabulary server to ‘translate’ between these different data semantics. The vocabulary server, which is effectively now an international standard for a service of this kind, was developed by the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC); a national facility operated as part of the National Oceanography Centre (NOC).
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That sounds promising, at least until you read:
By the time ODIP II is complete, in May 2018, it aims to have developed a means of seamlessly sharing and managing marine data between the EU, the USA and Australia, by co-ordinating the existing regional marine e-infrastructures.
I’ve never been really strong on geography but the last time I looked, “global” included more than the EU, USA and Australia.
Let’s be very generous and round the EU, USA and Australia population total up to 1 billion.
That leaves 6 billion people and hundreds of countries unaccounted for. Don’t know but some of those countries might have marine data. Won’t know if we don’t ask.
Still a great first step, but let’s not confuse the world with ourselves and what we know.