Ch. 7— Federal Programs for Collecting and Managing Oceanographic Data * 251 



There are several possible constraints to an ef- 

 fective EEZ data management program. They are: 



• technology — hardware/so ftv^are, 



• conceptual — how should the data be managed, 



• organization — capacity for collecting and ar- 

 chiving data, and 



• economic — adequate funding. 



Technology 



Computer, software, and recording technologies 

 have advanced dramatically during the past few 

 years and are expected to continue to advance rap- 

 idly. Technologies for collecting, aggregating, 

 transmitting, and accessing data are not limiting. 

 None of the key data managers queried by OTA'* 

 thought the rate of EEZ data acquisition would ex- 

 ceed the capacity of, or tax, existing high-density 

 magnetic tape storage. The promise of optical la- 

 ser disks a few years hence could make digital data 

 storage easily manageable. Storage of analog data, 

 or actual physical and chemical samples (e.g. , sedi- 

 ment cores), remains a substantial problem. How- 

 ever, these are physical space problems as opposed 

 to data management problems per se. If all data 

 could be converted to digital form, technology op- 



decline." Ibid., p. 63; "... There are three principal requirements 

 that are integral to this issue: (1) steadily upgraded computer systems 

 are needed to manage the expanding rate of data acquisition; (2) com- 

 plicated data management decisions must be made regarding (a) 

 amount and type of data to archive and (b) optima] format for future 

 use; and (3) a more responsive and efficient mechanism for the con- 

 tinued delivery of valuable and timely data products . . . must be 

 found." Ibid. 



""The quantity of geophysical data obtained with public funding 

 has increased dramatically in the past few decades. These data are 

 used not only by the scientific community, but are also important to 

 the general public for use by engineers, lawyers, and insurance actu- 

 aries as examples. Collected often at enormous expense, they repre- 

 sent a national resource that must be managed carefully to ensure they 

 are preserved and available when needed. Because of a substantial 

 increase in the amount and complexity of geophysical data being col- 

 lected and in the demands for them, the management policies and 

 procedures that have been developed are no longer adequate." Na- 

 tional Research Council, Policy Issues Concerning Geophysical Data, 

 A Draft Report prepared by the Geophysics Study Committee for the 

 Geophysics Research Forum, February 1986. 



'■•Roy L. Jenne, Head Data Support Section, National Center for 

 Atmospheric Research; Michael Chinnery, Director, National Geo- 

 physical Data Center (NGDC); Michael Loughridge, Chief, NGDC 

 Marine Geology and Geophysics Division; Gregory Withee, Direc- 

 tor, National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC); Robert Locher- 

 man. Information Services Division, NODC; Edward Escowitz, Of- 

 fice of Marine Geology, USGS; D. James Baker, Director of JOI, 

 Inc.; Ross Heath, Oregon State University. 



tions for storage, maintenance, and dispersal are 

 not limiting. 



Conceptual 



Data management has been the subject of many 

 exhaustive studies.'^ WhUe the volume of informa- 

 tion collected from the EEZ does not nearly ap- 

 proach the volume of space data collected by satel- 

 lites, many of the principles and recommendations 

 for handling space data are applicable to the EEZ 

 as well. These principles include: 



• involvement of scientists in data collection pro- 

 grams from inception to completion, 



• peer-review of data management activities by 

 the user community, 



• proper documentation of all data sets that have 

 been validated, and 



• adequate financial resources allocated early in 

 each project for database management and 

 computation activities.'^ 



There are also important differences in data ob- 

 tained in the EEZ and data taken from space. Un- 

 like satellite information, much of the EEZ data has 

 not been collected in digital form and cannot be 

 easily archived or manipulated. EEZ data also vary 

 in geographic scales and degree of detail (a 60-km- 

 wide GLORIA swath v. a 200-m-wide SeaMARC 

 CL swath) and may consist of different measures, 

 e.g., water current measurements, sediment depth, 

 and bedrock type. Researchers would like to be able 



"Four studies pertaining to data management have been produced 

 by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sci- 

 ences alone (Washington, DC: National Academy Press): "Geophysi- 

 cal Data Interchange Assessment," 1978; "Solar-Terrestrial Data Ac- 

 cess, Distribution, and Archiving," 1984; "Geophysical Data Centers: 

 Impact of Data-Intensive Programs," 1976; and "Policy Issues Con- 

 cerning Geophysical Data," (in review). From other groups: "Re- 

 search Data Management in the Ecological Sciences, Proceedings of 

 the 1983 Integrated Data Users Workshop, Nov. 1-2, 1983, USGS, 

 Reston, VA (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, TN); "Frontiers in 

 Data Storage, Retrieval and Display," Proceedings of a Marine Ge- 

 ology and Geophysics Data Workshop, Nov. 5-7, 1980 (Boulder, CO: 

 National Geophysical and Solar-Terrestrial Data Center, 1980); and 

 Proceedings of Marine Geological Data Management Workshop, May 

 22-24, 1978 (Boulder, CO: NOAA, 1978). Several papers by Roy 

 L. Jenne, Head, Data Support Section, National Center for Atmos- 

 pheric Research, include: "Strategies to Develop and Access Large 

 Sets of Scientific Data," 1980 and "Data Archiving and Manage- 

 ment," 1986. 



"■National Research Council, Space Sciences Board, Data Man- 

 agement and Computation, Volume 1: Issues and Recommendations 

 (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1982). 



