PICES Technical Committee on Data Exchange

WWW TCODE Site

Metadata Federation Project
PICES TCODE GeoNetwork Portal --> Status
GSDI Clearinhouse --> Status

1995

REPORT OF THE TECHNICAL COMMITTEE ON DATAEXCHANGE

The meeting was opened by the Chairman, Prof. Y. Nagata (Japan), at 1500. The members present briefly introduced themselves.

1. Terms of Reference
The terms of reference for TCODE include:

Recommend formation of ad hoc task groups to deal with specific functions of TCODE Review progress of task groups and provide Annual Reports
Develop strategic plans to meet these requirements
Identify the data management needs of PICES
Advise PICES Secretariat on its data exchange activities

2. Committee Members
Canada
Mr. Robin Brown IOS/DFO, Mr. William Shaw PBS/DFO
China
Mr. Song-Nian Jiang NMD&IS/SOA, Mr. Ling Tong YSFRI/CAFS
Japan
Dr. Tadao Tatsuno JODC, Dr. Tokimasa Kobayashi NRIFS/FAJ
Korea
Dr. Kee Soo Nam KORDI, Dr. Sangbok Hahn KODC/NFRDA
Russia
Dr. Gennady Yurasov POI, Dr. Lev Bocharov TIN'RO
U.S.A.
Dr. Jim Swift Scripps, Dr. William Karp NMFS

3. Summary of Activities Prior To Annual Meeting
The Technical Committee on Data Exchange (TCODE) was formed as a standing committee to replace WO 4 (Decision 94/S/4). PICES requested that each nation provide two scientists, with specialties in physical/ chemical oceanographic data and biological oceanographic and fisheries data. The committee was formed and a chairman (Mr. Robin Brown, Canada) appointed in the spring of 1995. Members from Russia were appointed in August 1995, and members for Korea were appointed in September 1995. The first meeting of TCODE was held in conjunction with the 4th Annual Meeting in Qingdao. Prior to this meeting, the chairman circulated a review of issues raised from WG 4 and the Science Board. Comments were received from TCODE members and a summary of the responses was distributed in August, 1995. A draft committee report was prepared and circulated to all members in September, prior to the Annual Meeting.

4. Summary of Meeting
TCODE meetings were held on the mornings of October 18 and 19, 1995. See Endnote I for attendance.
Observers included:
Mr. Skip McKinnell (Canada)
Prof. Y. Nagata (Japan)
Dr. V. Luchin (Russia)
Dr. V. Lobanov (Russia)
Dr. S. Variamov (Russia)

The following members were unable to attend the meeting:
Dr. L. Bocharov (Russia) (attended PICES meeting, but was absent due to illness)
Dr. Kee Soo Nam (Korea)
Mr. William Shaw (Canada)
Dr. Jim Swift (U.S.A.) (represented by Dr. T. Royer)
Dr. Tadao Tatsuno (Japan)

5. Operation of TCODE
The Committee reviewed progress to date and discussed the possibility of additional committee meetings between PICES annual meetings. The Committee recognized that travels costs were a substantial barrier for all members and agreed that members would meet only once each year, during the PICES annual meeting, with the bulk of the Committee's work to be carried out by correspondence. The committee noted that most representatives have access to electronic mail and this service would be available to all members in the near future.
The Committee agreed that while most of the business can be conducted by correspondence, attendance by representatives at the Annual Meeting was very important. If TCODE members are unable to meet and discuss issues arising from the Science Committees, TCODE will be unable to react to these important issues 62 in a timely manner and undesirable lags in activities may result.
The working relationships with various Science Committees and Working Groups was discussed. TCODE recommends that a TCODE member should attend WG and Science Committee meetings when appropriate to report on TCODE activities and to report back to TCODE on the relevant issues raised. TCODE members agreed to share the responsibility for this activity to minimize costs.

6. Issues Discussed
6.1 WG 4 Recommendation 4.2.1 - Visit international agencies to review data holdings
WG 4 Recommendation 4.2.2 - Create master inventory 16Y the PICFS -region
WG 4 Recommendation 4.2.3 - Continue development of the Healey et al (1985) report
TCODE members considered these recommendations together. TCODE supports these goals, but recognizes some serious difficulties in attacking these recommendations directly. In addition, the PICES Secretariat has experienced some difficulty in updating the information in the Healey et al report. The strategy suggested is as follows:
1. establish links with the key agencies who are responsible for the data holdings of interest in the area. This entails creating descriptions of the data holdings, distribution procedures and key contacts for each agency and distributing this information among PICES scientists as a short term solution for data exchange.
2. enlist the support of these agencies in the exchange and inventorying of relevant datasets and information. These agencies frequently have the staff and experts available to support data exchange functions.
3. PICES should create "links" among these organizations so that PICES scientists can retrieve the data that they require. We recommend setting up a PICES data directory or set of "pointers" to these agencies using the World Wide Web (WWW) on the Internet. The concept here is to provide access to the primary data holder, rather than duplicating the holdings within PICES, where possible and practical. This many prevent some of the serious problems of maintenance and synchronization that result when portions of data holdings are duplicated. The issue of maintenance and updating is important. PICES should carefully consider how it will maintain any datasets that it takes direct responsibility for the distribution and maintenance of. The resulting links will form a "virtual" inventory, rather than a physical, "standalone" inventory.

TCODE strongly supports the recommendation that PICES representatives visit or contact national and international science organizations to review data inventories and data exchange functions. TCODE, members noted the importance of establishing lists of organizations, holdings, contacts and procedures as a necessary early step in data exchange. The members were concerned about the potential for large travel co6ts and have requested that these visits be carefully planned and coordinated with other travel, wherever possible. Each visit should result in a trip report which summarizes the findings and is broadly distributed. Dr. Miyata (PICES Secretariat) will undertake the first of these visits to Korea following the Qingdao meeting. TCODE members will auist in providing names of organizations and contacts and coordinating visits within their own country.

6.2 WG 4 Recommendation 4.2.4 Detail Survey of Research Cruises
The creation of an inventory of recent and proposed cruises in the PICES region is strongly supported by TCODE. TCODE notes that there are already existing formats and conventions for such reports and recommends that these be adopted. Adopting existing standards and formats will reduce the burden on the information providers and will allow users to create Cruise Summary Reports (CSR) using software provided by ICES/IOC. The creation of a ship schedule "notice board" is also supported. This would allow PICES scientists to explore the possibilities of joint projects or sampling using planned cruises from other nations. It will be a challenge to gather this information well in advance of the scheduled cruise date. The IOC has an existing system for exchanging this information (the National Oceanographic Program - NOP) which contains much of the required information. We also note that the University National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) in the United States has an electronic ship schedule available on the Internet.

6.3 WG 4 Recommendation 4.3.2 - PICES enter into joint ventures with other Data Centers to produce CD-ROMs of important dataset (e.g. OWS PAPA).
TCODE supports this activity, so long as it does not duplicate any related activity at one of the existing data centers. We feet it is more important to ensure that data from PICES nations is migrated quickly and efficiently to the existing national centers and to ensure that the links amongst the national and world data centers are operating well. TCODE feels the strategy for publication of important datasets sholdd be (in order of priority).
a. migrate data to world or regional centers so that the data are included in the existing products (for example, we feel it is important to migrate CTD and water property data to WDC-A in Washington to be included in the World Ocean Atlas product which is being produced by WDC-A; we also note that JODC has recently published a similar volume to temperature profiles of the Pacific on CD-ROM).
b. where there is no existing or planned data product offered by national, regional or world data centers, PICES should encourage oil existing data center to undertake this task.
c. PICES should undertake publishing, distribution and maintenance of datasets when options a) or b) am unavailable or will take too long to complete. PICES might well serve as a temporary distribution center for datasets which will eventually be included in other products/databases or for datasets which cannot find a suitable "home" elsewhere. PICES (through the efforts of the Secretariat and TCODE) should take an active role in "advertising" and distributing inflation on datasets that are useful to the PICES members. Mr. Skip McKinnell (Pacific Biological Station, Department of Fishene6 and Ocean, Canada) has created such a dataset for distribution by PICES. This dataset (and accompanying Technical Report) contains zooplankton data from Ocean Weather Station PAPA from the 1950's to the 1980's.

6.4 Science Board Recommendation 94/S/5 - Joint PICES/NPAFC task group on fisheries data
The goal of the proposed seek grow was to assemble the historical INPFC catch summary statistics in a convenient, electronic form for distribution to the scientific community. The arrangements for this are still in the hands of the Secretariat and it is not yet clear what the role of TCODE might be.

6.5 Science Board Recommendation 94/S/6 - Translation of TINRO inventories of scientific surveys
TCODE was to review these publications and comment on the utility and importance of translation of such inventories. Members found such inventories to be useful, but represent an interim step towards on-line inventories of oceanographic and fisheries data. Such on-line inventories can reduce the costs of distributing this kind of information and can allow users to form specific requests.

6.6 Science Board Recommendation 94/S/7 - PICES-GLOBEC Climate Change and Carrying Capacity Program
TOODE members recognize importance of coordination of data management and exchange for this program. The TCODE Chairman is a member of the Implementation Panel. TCODE should take an active role in providing access to basin-scale datasets for model input and retrospective analysis. In response to a request for information on long term time series, TCODE proposes to assemble and electronic inventory of such data for the PICES area.

6.7 Science Board Recommendation 94/S/1 - Electronic networks and bulletin boards
The PICES Secretariat has recently purchased a computer to serve as a World Wide Web (WWW) server for PICES. TCODE strongly supports this strategy. The exploitation of the WWW strategy, which involves creating "links" to other locations/datasets/information resources is consistent with the TCODE recommendations with respect to data exchange - we should be exploiting the facilities, holdings and expertise of existing data centers whenever possible. In this view, much of the PICES data distribution function could be provided by building clear, concise web documents that describe the various available data sources and how to get data from dome locations. In many cases, there will be an actual hypertext link that will take the user from a PICES web page to other existing web pages (e.g. NODCIWDC-A, MEDS, JODC etc.). This will prevent duplication of information (the user is automatically "moved" to the real data source) and reduce the requirement for maintenance and updating of datasets and information on the PICES system.

Automated distribution (via ftp) of data files can also be accomplished using this system. Access to WWW is not universal in the PICES region, so it will be necessary for the PICES secretariat to maintain a separate "digest" or summary of the contents and a method of "ordering" documents and/or data files by mail. The summary of the current contents of the PICES web pages should be include in any future mailings to the PICES information distribution list. In time, this requirement may be become unnecessary.

7. Summary of Progress Made on Terms of Reference

7.1 Recommend formation of ad hoc task groups to deal with specific functions of TCODE
TCODE does not recommend the formation of Task Groups at this time. The activities planned by TCODE will be carried out by the committee of the whole.

7.2 Review progress of task groups and provide Annual Reports
TCODE held its first meeting at the PICES 4th Annual Meeting in Qingdao. The report describes the activities of the committee since formation (Spring, 1995).

7.3 Develop strategic plans to meet these requirements
The TCODE strategic plan for PICES data management has the following elements:

• use existing national/international data centers, programs and techniques wherever possible
• encourage migration of data to these existing data centers
• assist PICES scientists to locate and obtain data of interest
• use the VIWW/Intemet system to provide information and provide "pointers" to important agencies or institutions ~ provide a 'home' and active distribution system for datasets that are not available elsewhere

• ship schedules and cruise reports
• meteorological data
• physical and chemical oceanographic data
• biological oceanographic and plankton data
• fish catch and distribution data
• fish "biology" data (length, condition etc.)
• commonly used environmental indices (PNA, El Nino etc.)
• birds and marine mammal distribution and abundance data
• marine environmental quality data
• remote sensing data In addition, TCODE should distribute information on software 'tools' for the analysis and processing of these datasets.

• advising on the installation and configuration of the PICES V/WW server
• advising on information-gathering visits to other agencies. The first of these visits will be to Korea immediately following the PICES 4th Annual Meeting
• in the coming year, TCODE members will be expected to contribute information material for the PICES WWW server.