Parameter Name Standards for Marine Data:

Background

In January, 2008, the IOC and JCOMM convened a workshop entitled the IODE/JCOMM Forum on Oceanographic Data Management and Exchange Standards (IOC Workshop Rept. 206), to consider selected principal issues on establishing marine data standards, with the goal of furthering marine data interoperability. In particular the aim of the workshop was to get broad agreement and commitment to adopt a number of standards related to ocean data management and exchange, thereby assembling not only the agreed conditions by which we operate, but in fact enact these agreements in the participants' respective organizations.

Standards Recommendation

Mr. Etienne Charpentier (WMO) introduced this item and moderated discussions. He reviewed the various lists that exist for identifying parameters. He focused attention on Parameter Usage Vocabularies (PUVs) that label single data values and may also be used for discovery. In this context he addressed the following: BODC, NetCDF CF, NetCDF EPIC and BUFR, but also mentioned MEDATLAS, SEACOOS, JGOFS, GLOBEC, GF3, GTSOPP and GRIB. Mr. Charpentier proposed to focus on specific disciplines first to limit the number of parameters (e.g. Physical oceanography, marine meteorology) and to consider BODC, BUFR, CF and EPIC. They should provide for the following attributes: unique ID, name, definition, collection ID and version ID. He further stressed the need for mapping between the aforementioned.