Data Management Group

Data are integral to sea-going and laboratory scientific research. They are, in the first instance within the projects in which they are collected, used by scientists to find answers to scientific questions. But data are valuable in more respects. They can be used within a broader context in the future, for instance in trend-studies. Data are often unique: collecting oceanographic data is very expensive and, for logistical and financial reasons, it is not usually possible to repeat the measurements.

A prerequisite for the (re)use of data is that they are well described, archived and kept available. The collecting, describing, archiving and provision of data is known as data management.

The Data Management Group (DMG) is the data center for the Dutch National Cruise Programme of the scientific oceanographic community in The Netherlands. The DMG is funded by NWO and Royal NIOZ and is a separate group within the department of Physical Oceanography.

The main tasks of the DMG are:

• to archive and keep available all relevant data of the cruises within the Dutch National Cruise Programme and the Royal NIOZ cruise programme

• to assist scientists during all phases of a project with data handling (end-to-end-datamanagement)

In more detail these tasks are:

· to provide advice and assistance to scientists in the planning phase of projects and cruises with respect to the management aspects of the data acquisition

· to assist scientists with data acquisition, calibration and preliminary data processing during cruises

· to assist scientists with the calibration and post-processing after a cruise

· to archive and back-up all relevant data related to the academic research projects

· to develop and maintain the CODIS information system, an on-line oceanographic database with high quality data

· to exchange data with other data centres in the world

· to assist scientists in obtaining additional datasets from other sources

· to produce data products, tailor-made to the users’ needs

The DMG represents the Royal NIOZ in the National Oceanographic Data Committee (NODC). The DMG also functions as the National Antarctic Data Centre (NADC) and represents The Netherlands in the Joint Committee on Antarctic Data Management (JCADM).

In support of these activities, DMG maintains the web pages of a number of projects, notably the Secretariat pages of the National Oceanographic Data Committee (NODC), the International Research Ship Operators’ Meeting (ISOM) and the pages of the Netherlands Antarctic Data Inventory (NADI).