Limited Distribution
IOC/IODE-XVI/10
Paris, 20 September 2000
Original: English
INTERGOVERNMENTAL OCEANOGRAPHIC COMMISSION
(of UNESCO)
Sixteenth Session of the IOC Committee on International Oceanographic Data and
Information Exchange (IODE), Lisbon, Portugal, 30 October – 9 November 2000
Report on NOPs Submission - Status and Future
Submitted by P.Pissierssens, IOC Secretariat
1. INTRODUCTION
We recall, from IODE-XV:
“3.2 MONITORING GLOBAL OCEAN DATA FLOW
21 The Technical Secretary, Dr. I. Oliounine introduced Document IOC/IODE-XV/7 and
called the Committee's attention to the status of one of the data monitoring elements announcement of National Oceanographic Programmes (NOPs) by IOC Member States,
and related problems.
22 He referred to the decisions of previous sessions of the Committee and to requests
encouraging Member States to increase their participation in this ocean data monitoring
mechanism. He emphasized two advantages of timely NOPs submission: (i) provision of
information on potential data availability; and (ii) the use of NOPs announcements as a
mechanism to identify training opportunities.
23 Dr. Oliounine expressed concern that in spite of all efforts there was no increase in
the number of participating Member States and presented statistics of the NOPs
announcements for 1976-1995. He pointed out some related problems: delays of several
months in NOPs submission; submission of NOPs in different formats (though there is an
internationally agreed format presented as an Annex to the IOC-ICSU Manual on IODE);
distribution of NOPs by the IOC Secretariat is time and energy consuming (until today,
only one country, Japan, responded positively to the invitation to Member States to assist
the Secretariat in distributing their NOPs); submission of NOPs is being carried out by
other than IODE-related national institutions.
24 Dr. F. Webster, of the University of Delaware, summarized the oceanographic
research vessel database maintained by his organization. The system, known as
OCEANIC, is an on-line information source that is available over the World Wide Web
(http://diu.cms.udel.edu). It contains information on hundreds of research ship cruises
from almost 20 countries. In addition, a ship specification database provides information
on the characteristics of almost a hundred research vessels. It also incorporates the FAO
ship database.
25 Dr. Webster offered to work with IOC to improve the usefulness of OCEANIC to meet
the needs of NOPs announcements. He also urged Member States to submit information
IOC/IODE-XVI/10
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on future cruises to OCEANIC or to the IOC Secretariat, noting that the timely submission
of information was a major factor limiting the usefulness of the system.
26 After discussion, the Committee agreed that (i) NOPs submission should be
continued and Member States encouraged; (ii) closer and probably, formal relations be
established with OCEANIC to increase effectiveness of both sources of information; (iii)
loading of NOPs on a WWW server be implemented while continuing the practice of
distributing NOPs in hard copy to those countries which have no access to WWW
facilities; (iv) ways of merging cruise summary reports (CSR) and NOPs should be
explored.
27 The Committee requested the Chairman of the Group of Experts on TADE to study
this matter and recommend technical solutions to the next IODE Officers Meeting,
planned for 1997.
28 The Committee expressed thanks to Japan for their continuous support of the
distribution of national oceanographic programmes announcements, and urged other
Member States to follow this example.”
During the 1998 IODE Officers Meeting (Goa, India, 10-13 February 1998) the issue was
discussed again:
“The progress of co-operation between WOCE-DIU and IODE in NOPs circulation was
reported. A few years ago WOCE-DIU offered to load the NOPs on the OCEANIC website.
Accordingly, copies of all NOPs being received by the IOC Secretariat are (i) mailed to the
IODE National Co-ordinators; (ii) published as IOC/INF documents; and (iii) forwarded to
the Group of Mr. F. Webster for inclusion in OCEANIC. A list of NOPs received by the IOC
in 1996, 1997 and 1998 was presented (Annex V). It was observed that despite
discussions at IODE-XV, few NOPs are submitted and as such the continuing publication
of NOPs was questioned.
The Meeting recommended to send a Circular Letter to the IOC Member States
informing them on the state of submission of NOPs and thanking those who submitted
NOPs to the IOC Secretariat. It will further invite Member States to continue and facilitate
NOP submissions and to report on the usefulness of the NOPs in printed and on-line
form. OCEANIC will be requested to provide statistics on the use (visits to the website) of
the OCEANIC NOP records. These statistics and details of NOP submissions will be
included in the IODE website.”
Actions taken:
-
-
As a follow-up to the recommendation of the IODE Officers Meeting, IOC Circular Letter
1563 was sent on 2 March 1998 to IOC Member States; IODE National Co-ordinators;
Chairman of the IOC Committee on IODE; and Vice-Chairman of the IOC Committee on
IODE;
The statistics of NOP submissions are part of this document. Additional information,
provided by OCEANIC may be distributed during the Session
2. NOPs RECEIVED BY THE IOC SECRETARIAT DURING THE INTERSESSIONAL PERIOD
1996
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DATE MAILED
IOC/INF-1019 5 February
NOP of Australia (1996) & Research Schedule
IOC/INF-1022 5 February
NOP of Germany
IOC/INF-1023 5 February
NOP of Brazil
IOC/INF-1024 8 March NOP of UK
IOC/INF-1025 8 March NOP of Norway
IOC/INF-1029 19 April NOP of Germany for 1996 (Planned) and Cruise
Plans 1996 of the
Baltic Sea Research Institute
IOC/INF-1030 19 April NOP of Turkey (Planned)
IOC/INF-1031 19 April Research Plans 1996 and Cruise Reports 1995 of
the CSIRO, Australia
IOC/INF-1032 19 April NOP of Finland (Planned)
IOC/INF-1034 31 May NOP of Korea (Planned)
IOC/INF-1036 18 June NOP of Netherlands for 1995 and 1996 (Planned)
IOC/INF-1037 18 June NOP of Germany ARV/METEOR@ Cruise No. 36
and ARV/Professor
Albrecht Penck@ Cruise No. 40
IOC/INF-1038 18 June NOP of Australia
IOC/INF-1041 30 July
NOP of Japan
TOTAL NOPs: 14
1997
DATE MAILED
IOC/INF-1047 24
IOC/INF-1056 28
IOC/INF-1057 28
IOC/INF-1066 11
IOC/INF-1067 11
IOC/INF-1076 18
IOC/INF-1080 25
IOC/INF-1081 25
IOC/INF-1082 25
January
February
February
April
April
June
June
July
July
IOC/INF-1083 22 August
NOP of Brazil (Planned)
NOP of Sweden
Cruise Programmes of UK
NOP of Finland
NOP of Turkey
NOP of Korea
Cruise Plan - Tropics 97 of Australia
NOP of Japan
NOP of Argentina for 1997 (Planned) and
1996
Cruise Summaries and Plan - Tropics 97
for Australia
TOTAL NOPs: 10
1998
IOC/INF-1088 9 January
IOC/INF-1089 9 January
DATEMAILED
Cruise Plan R/V Franklin Fr 01/98
Australia
NOP of Brazil
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IOC/INF-1094 28 January
IOC/INF-1096 13 May
IOC/INF-1099 13 May
IOC/INF-1100 13 May
IOC/INF-1101 13 May
IOC/INF-1105 26 June
IOC/INF-1106 26 June
IOC/INF-1109 8 July
IOC/INF-1111 12 August
National Oceanographic Programme of
Sweden
National Oceanographic Programmes –
Argentina for 1995 and 1996 (Planned)
National Oceanographic Programme of
Turkey planned for 1998
Cruise Programmes 1998 - United
Kingdom Research Vessels
National Oceanographic Programme of the
Republic of Korea for 1998 (Planned)
Cruise Plans R/V Franklin (FR 07/98 and
FR 06/98), Research Plan R/V Franklin (FR
03/98), Cruise Summaries R/V Franklin
(FR 03/98 and FR 02/98) and Cruise
Summaries R/V Franklin (FR 11/97, 10/97
AND 09/97) Australia
French Oceanographic Programme for
1998 and Chief Scientists Addresses
National Oceanographic Programmes of
Argentina - 1997 and 1998 (Planned)
National Oceanographic Programme of
Japan Planned for April 1998 - March 1999
TOTAL NOPs: 11
1999
DATE MAILED
IOC/INF-1116 4 February
IOC/INF-1117 4 February
IOC/INF-1119 November
Cruise Plan R/V Franklin & Cruise
Summaries - Australia
Oceanographic Programme of Brazil –
Planned for 1999
National Oceanographic Programme of
Sweden
TOTAL NOPs: 3
2000
NOT PROCESSED
3. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The number of NOPs submitted to the IOC Secretariat has remained low (less than 20/year). This
compares extremely poorly with the cruise schedules received by OCEANIC’s ‘Research Ship
Schedules & Information pages’: a searchable database of cruise schedules and ship
specifications and contact information. for research vessels around the world.
IOC/IODE-XVI/10
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URL:
http://oceanic.cms.udel.edu/ships/
Ship operators can now enter their schedules and update their online ship information via the
"Data Entry Forms" .
We compare the number of NOPs received/sent by IOC with those available in the OCEANIC’s
‘research Ship Schedules’ database:
1996
IOC
#countries
10
1997
8
1998
8
1999
3
Australia, Brazil,
Sweden
10
2000
N/a
-
6
2001
N/a
countries
Australia, Germany,
Brazil, UK, Japan,
Korea, Turkey,
Finland, Netherlands,
Norway
Brazil, Sweden, UK,
Finland, Turkey,
Korea, Australia,
Argentina
Argentina, Australia,
Brazil, France,
Japan, Korea (Rep.),
Sweden, UK
OCEANIC
#countries
-
countries
-
-
-
14
Argentina, Australia,
Belgium, Brazil, Finland,
France, Germany, India,
Japan, Korea, Sweden,
Turkey, UK, USA
Argentina, Australia,
Belgium, Chile, France,
Germany, India, Japan, UK,
USA
Belgium, France, Japan,
Netherlands, UK, USA
The results show that, even in the best years, there were not more than 10 countries submitting
National Oceanographic Programmes. Furthermore some countries entered their information
directly into OCEANIC rather than sending it to the IOC.
Undoubtedly the NOP information needs to be available on-line. At this stage we feel it would be
a waste of resources to duplicate the OCEANIC database system.
We are therefore recommending terminating the paper mailing of NOPs and request the
Member States to enter their NOPs (ship schedules) directly into the OCEANIC system. A link to
the OCEANIC Research Ship Schedules & Information System has been added to both the IODE
web site and OceanPortal.
The OCEANIC Research Ship Schedules & Information System
Whereas the schedules were presented as static html pages before, the system was overhauled
recently into a searchable on-line database. This now also enables users to enter their
information on-line:
IOC/IODE-XVI/10
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On-line entry of ship schedules:
http://oceanic.cms.udel.edu/ships/data_entry_forms.htm
On-line query interface:
The on-line query interface
enables searching by
- ship name
- year
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Output ca be sorted by departure date or Country/Shipname/Departure date
Additionally, if this information was provided, queries can be made by ‘Experiment’, ‘Principal
Investigator’, ‘Country’, ‘Discipline’ , ‘Geographic area’ or ‘Navy Grid’.
Search results:
Search results are displayed in a simple, 2-line tabular form.
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(end of document)
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