The Union of Myanmar has nominated Captain Min Thein Thint as IODE National Coordinator for Oceanographic Data Management and IODE National Coordinator for Marine Information Management. We are pleased to welcome Myanmar to the IODE family and we look forward to the establishment of an NODC. More info on Captain Min Thein Thint HERE
by Peter Pissierssens, Head IOC Project Office for IODE
The International Conference "50 Years of Education and Awareness Raising for Shaping the Future of the Oceans and Coasts" was held in St Petersburg, Russian Federation between 27-30 April 2010. Due to the volcanic eruption in Iceland the previous weeks the number of international participants was less than expected but nevertheless the Conference was a success and resulted in a few important conclusions related to IODE's training and education activities.
The
Conference’s objective was to come forward with a number of recommendations
related to the topic of the 5 panels: (Panel 1) Role of international
organizations in fostering and improving
education and training services to society in the area of environmental
sciences I was invited to present a Presentation; (Panel 2) Present and future
of education and training development in the area of marine sciences with the
attention to the role of science in sustainable development and related issues;
(Panel 3) Educational technology and modern methods of education for the
development of national and regional potential for the support of marine
sciences and observations; (Panel 4) Management and funding of educational and training
processes; and (Panel 5) Awareness raising of the importance of marine research
and protection of marine environment on a scientific basis. To reach this
objective the participants in the Conference were invited to participate in one
of the 5 panels. Prior to the meeting in Panels the Chair of each Panel (I was
one of them) were invited to introduce the Panel through a relevant
Presentation. The title of my presentation was “OceanTeacher: a versatile tool for ocean data and information
management training”.
(Photos: top: Dr Wendy Watson-Wright, IOC Executive Secretary opening the Conference; Fig left: view of the plenary Conference room)
A meeting was convened by the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR), the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) and the Marine Biological Laboratory/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Library (MBLWHOI Library) on 2 April 2010 to advance the two use cases that had been developed over the past two years by the SCOR/IODE activity on data publication. Increased access to data is becoming increasingly important to stimulate data reuse and to get data into the public domain, where it can contribute to discussions of important science issues, including the ocean’s role in climate change and the global carbon cycle, marine biodiversity, fisheries, harmful algal blooms, and others. The meeting noted progress in the two use cases, on publishing data related to traditional journal articles and data held by data centres, and made plans for future cooperation between data centres and libraries.
The IMDIS 2010 Conference took place at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France between 29 and 31 March 2010. The Conference was attended by 230 participants from 46 countries. The Conference was organized by IFREMER, jointly wit SeaDataNet and IOC/IODE.
The Conference program was sub-dividided into 4 themes: (i) Data quality issues in ocean science; (ii) Dat circulation and Services in ocean science; (iii) Interoperability and Standards in Marine Data Management; and (iv) Education in ocean science. This was followed by a roundtable discussion on "Future prospective on linking distributed marine data systems".
In his closing address Mr Gilbert Maudire (IFREMER) noted that the Conference had provided a comprehensive overview of the many initiatives ongoing in ocean data management. The Conference had demonstrated the commitment of the community to establish interoperability of the many initiatives to reach a global distributed data system. The interoperability is made possible thanks to technical progress but we also need to adopt and use standards. We have seen convergence in several areas sc. as metadata (ISO 19***), OGC protocols.
Mr Maudire called for a next IMDIS Conference to be held in 2012-2013.
The Proceedings will be published by IOC/IODE around the end of 2010.
All presentations can be downloaded from the IMDIS 2010 web site through http://www.seadatanet.org/imdis2010/presentations . In addition, the IOC Project Office for IODE video-recorded all presentations. These are available also from the IMDIS 2010 web site (same URL) or from the IODE be site's video section http://www.iode.org/videos
The IODE OceanTeacher Videolibrary now contains 100 videos.
Since 2006 the IODE programme has started video-recording the lectures taught at the IOC Project Office for IODE in Oostende, belgium. Until recently the videos were made available through various web sites which often made it difficult to locate them. All videos recorded since 2006 are now being hosted by one provider and can be viewed through your familiar web browser. In addition a full list of all videos is available through the URL http://www.iode.org/videos .
The Library is aimed at making available lectures as well as
other presentations to a wide audience and to preserve expertise of the
many national experts working in oceanographic data centres and marine
libraries, collaborating with IODE. In addition the Video Library will
become a historical archive of video materials related to IODE and IOC.The videos are categorized into a number of Albums. Each album is
usually an event (eg training course, conference) and may include
several videos.
The
IODE workshop on quality control (QC) of chemical oceanographic data collections
was held at the IOC Project Office for IODE in Oostende, Belgium between 8 and
11 February 2010. The meeting, proposed and organized by the IODE Group of
Experts on Biological and Chemical Data Management and Exchange Practices
(GE-BICH), welcomed 19 experts in chemical data management as well as data
producers and users from 13 countries. The objective of the workshop was to
evaluate existing procedures and define a minimum set of QC tests and criteria
for dissolved inorganic nutrients (phosphate, silicate, nitrate+nitrite,
nitrate, nitrite, and ammonium) and dissolved oxygen in seawater. The meeting
produced several outcomes. First, the meeting identified two proposals to be
submitted to the IODE/JCOMM Ocean Data Standards process (1) a quality control
flag scheme based on quantifiable and subjective tests; and (2) at a later
stage and following consultation with the wider community, a scaled
nomenclature for data processing levels for data held in data centers. The
meeting also issued a number of recommendations which will be taken forward in
post-workshop activities in consultation and in interaction with the wider
international community. These included: (1) metadata terminology for reporting
measured variables and their units of measure as well as (2) a work plan to
recommend a minimum set of numerically defined QC tests that could be adjusted
to reflect broad regional to basin scales conditions. These guidelines and
recommendations will be assembled on the GE-BICH wiki for peer-review before being
published as a technical white paper or guideline document. The report is available through http://www.iode.org/wr228
PIMRIS Portal the one stop website for all Pacific marine fisheries
information
It will now take as much effort as pushing a
button for you to have access to a wealth of quality marine and
fisheries information from the Pacific. Gone are the days of having to
trawl through different websites and constant library visits as you
search for information on Pacific marine fisheries and environment. With
thanks to the cooperation and contribution of all regional agencies who
work in this area, the soon to be launched Pacific Islands Marine
Portal (http://www.pimrisportal.org ) has brought everything together in
the one website, making life a lot easier when it comes to seeking out
information on Pacific marine environment and fisheries.
PIMRIS,
the Pacific Islands Marine Resources Information System is a Pacific
network consisting of agencies from the Council of Regional
Organisations in the Pacific (CROP), it has been in operation for the
past two decades focusing on building capacity in knowledge management
in fisheries departments throughout the Pacific region. Taking it
a step further, PIMRIS has engaged in a new project in partnership with
the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange Programme
(IODE) of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of
UNESCO to provide an online gateway to all information available to the
marine resource sector in the Pacific.
The PIMRIS Portal is hosted by the IOC project Office for IODE in Oostende, Belgium as a service provided within the framework of its ODINPIMRIS project.
The Union of Myanmar has nominated Captain Min Thein Thint as IODE National Coordinator for Oceanographic Data Management and IODE National Coordinator for Marine Information Management. We are pleased to welcome Myanmar to the IODE family and we look forward to the establishment of an NODC. More info on Captain Min Thein Thint 
Oceans and Coasts" was held in St Petersburg, Russian Federation between 27-30 April 2010. Due to the volcanic eruption in Iceland the previous weeks the number of international participants was less than expected but nevertheless the Conference was a success and resulted in a few important conclusions related to IODE's training and education activities.
The IMDIS 2010 Conference took place at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France between 29 and 31 March 2010. The Conference was attended by 230 participants from 46 countries. The Conference was organized by IFREMER, jointly wit SeaDataNet and IOC/IODE.
The IODE OceanTeacher Videolibrary now contains 100 videos. 
