Annual Report of the Rep. of Korea

TCODE meeting, Sunday, October 17, 2004, 13:30-17:00

MOMAF(Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, http://www.momaf.go.kr/eng/main/main.asp) is going to make up task force team consisting of some experts from domestic marine related organizations to resolve issues on the cooperative ocean observing, and thus to set up integrated management systems for oceanographic data and information in a long term basis. For this purpose, MOMAF has designated KORDI(Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute) as the “Real-Time Data Center” and NFRDI(National Fisheries Research and Development Institute, KODC) as the “Delayed-Mode Data Center”. MOMAF has also decided to adopt NEAR-GOOS(North-East Asian Regional Global Ocean Observing System) data exchange flow for integrating and serving oceanographic data and information effectively. Future plans of MOMAF on these issues are (i) to build up data/information sharing system for integrating real-time data (ii) to set up standard and QA/QC(quality assurance/quality control) procedures (iii) to push forward standardization of ocean observing equipments and regular maintenances.

NFRDI(National Fisheries Research and Development Institute, KODC, http://www.nfrdi.re.kr/english/new_english/index.php) has established self-controlled, small scale, automatic ocean observing network at 7 stations in southern coastal areas in 2003. Automatic observing systems are installed on manlessly operated light buoys, and gather surface water temperature, salinity data in every 30 minutes interval and transmit those data to land station data server(computer) in an e-mail form. In the server, those data are processed, quality controlled and stored in the database, and are immediately served to users in the internet homepage. NFRDI has started this kind of approaches for monitoring and studying coastal environments in a more efficient manner. NFRDI will expand nodes(sites) of those networks totally about 25 stations to eastern and western coastal areas for three years until 2005.

KODC has also built metadatabase of oceanographic data and information from 2000 under the support of MOMAF. Now, about 12,000 records are stored in the metadatabase, and users are able to retrieve and access those data in the KODIS(Korea Oceanographic Data and Information Service) website. (http://kodis.nfrdi.re.kr/dbms_cat/top3, Korean and English language)

NORI(National Oceanographic Research Institute, http://www.nori.go.kr/en/data/new_index.asp) has collected various hydrographic, geographic and oceanographic data around Korean peninsula. Those data are processed and basically used for making nautical charts, tide table, tidal current charts, ocean current charts, and finally stored in the databases. From several years ago, NORI has endeavored to set up real-time data gathering networks for tidal data. There are 26 tidal stations around the main ports in Korea, which are operated by telemetering system. Results have been used for tidal prediction, prediction of uncovered sea bottom, issue of tidal table and real-time information service through Internet.

NORI has developed electronic navigational chart(ENC) since 1995, and completed 209 ENCs. Now, these charts are distributed and contribute to prevention of marine accidents.

KORDI(Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute, http://www.kordi.re.kr/eng/index.asp) has constructed Ieodo ocean research station in 2003 under the support of MOMAF. The Ieodo Ocean Research Station is an integrated meteorological and oceanographic observation base which was first constructed in Korea. It was constructed at Ieodo underwater rock which is located 149 km to the south-east of Mara-Do, the southernmost island in Korea. The structure is of a fixed jacket type installed at a depth of 40 m (DL), and upper deck has its total area of 1,320 m³, composed of a cellar deck, a main deck with residential space and laboratory, and a helideck for facilitating rescue activities and transportation. The observation equipments include meteorological, oceanographic, structure monitoring instruments. All of hardware in the tower including data acquisition and control systems were designed to communicate with KORDI through Mugunghwa satellite and Global Star.

(http://ieodo.kordi.re.kr/, Korean language)

KMA(Korea Meteorological Administration) deployed meteorological data buoys, two in the western coastal area, two in the southern coastal area and one in the eastern coastal area of the Korean peninsula. Both of the meteorological and oceanographic data are gathered, stored in the database and distributed through KMA main website.( http://www.kma.go.kr/kmas/kma/english/main.html)

In Korea, marine organizations normally process collected data by themselves or relies partly on data processing experts or related organizations through contracts. They are using various software tools such as database(Oracle, Excel, etc.), graphic(Suffer, Matlab, Gmt, IDL, etc.) or GIS(Caris, Mapis, ArcView, ER Mapper, etc.). In some cases, they have developed specific software programs for their own purposes.

Data exchange policies in Korea are based on the Marine Scientific Research Act enacted by the MOST(Ministry of Science and Technology) in 1995. Basically, every marine organizations have the responsibility to submit oceanographic data inventories to responsible data center(Designated National Oceanographic Data Management Agency, NFRDI) each year, and should open and share their data after certain periods of time in case which those data are collected using public funds from the governments. Normally, governmental organizations open their data immediately after data processing or within one year period in the form of digital data or annual report. But, in the case of research organizations or universities three years of periods are permitted to data investigators (project managers or members of the team) for their exclusive uses for writing report, paper or thesis, etc.