NOWPAP
United Nations Environment Programme
Northwest
Pacific
Action Plan
Distr.
RESTRICTED
UNEP/NOWPAP/DINRAC
FPM 11/11
28 June 2013
Original: English
Northwest Pacific Action Plan
Data and Information Network
Regional Activity Centre
The 11th NOWPAP DINRAC Focal Points Meeting
Beijing, the People’s Republic of China, 24 - 25 July 2013
Proposal for Issue of International Atlas “Climate, oceanography and marine
environment of NOWPAP area near-shore zone”
Note by DINRAC:
The proposal is prepared by Focal Points of Russia for discussion and approval
by the 11th DINRAC Focal Points Meeting.
Table of Contents
I
Background ........................................................................................................................ 1
II
Objective ........................................................................................................................... 2
III
Contents of Work...............................................................................................................2
IV
Allocation of Work and Budget Allocation ...................................................................... 3
V
Schedule of Work ............................................................................................................... 5
Annex 1.......................................................................................................................................6
Annex 2.......................................................................................................................................7
Annex 3.....................................................................................................................................10
UNEP/NOWPAP/DINRAC/FPM/11/11
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Proposal for Issue of International Atlas “Climate, oceanography and marine
environment of NOWPAP area near-shore zone”
(Draft)
I
Background
1. One of the major functions of DINRAC is to promote the exchange of information on marine
and coastal environmental data among NOWPAP member countries. In order to accomplish
this function, DINRAC, including other Regional Activities Centers of NOWPAP, has been
collecting and disseminating marine environmental data on such issues as marine litter, land
source contaminants, marine protected areas, biodiversity, summary of major marine
environmental data available in member states, basic scientific information on marine invasive
species, etc, in the past years. This has promoted the exchange of data and information to a
certain extent.
2. Up to today, NOWPAP RACs have been collecting marine environmental data and made
some progress.
3. According to the current situation of NOWPAP data collection, it exists already regular
collection of data and databases on marine litter, oil spill accidents, hazardous and noxious
substance spill accidents, and sporadic collection of data on marine protected areas, harmful
algal blooms, river and direct input of pollutants, waste dumping. It is implemented new
collection of data on atmospheric deposition of pollutants, sea water quality and major sea
water pollutants, and quality of bottom sediments for 2010-2011.
4. All the data, information and issues distributed on different sources of information are
available as data bases, reports, overviews and documents in DINRAC and other NOWPAP
RACs web sites. Access to information about other relevant national data, metadata and
products on coastal and marine environment contained on the national/regional websites/web
pages of member countries are available through tools of DINRAC Portal (Activity L
implementation results).
5. In addition, many new information products and reports on marine environment conditions
become available in the member countries as a result of current projects completion. Users of
the resources in member countries might have needs to get these data in the form of rapid and
generalized information for visual perception of information.
6. Easy way to collect and exchange the data and information is issue of international Atlas
"Climate, oceanography and marine environment of NOWPAP area near-shore zone" as web
resource of DINRAC web-site and DVD, based on existing prototypes.
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II
Objective
7. The objectives of this Atlas are:
1) to collect data and information relevant to topics and required categories of resources in
the NOWPAP region, to process them and to present results in the form of data sets (if it is
possible), tables, graphs and charts with short textual description in a comprehensive way to
control state and dynamics of marine environment change in the region for last 5-10 years;
2) to combine the data and information and to develop the necessary software;
3) to disseminate this Atlas through DINRAC web-site and by DVD as wide as possible to
promote data and information sharing among NOWPAP member countries, to promote public
awareness and education, thus to contribute to addressing problems of marine environment in
NOWPAP member countries.
III
Contents of Work
8. In order to reach the objective of this proposal, the work will mainly include the following:
1) Discussion of the Framework activity among NOWPAP DINRAC member countries
NFPs (2013).
2) Design of the Atlas. The atlas will be designed according to normal practices to
guarantee demonstration in different forms the characteristics of climate, oceanography and
marine environment in the NOWPAP area near-shore zone and the dynamics of their changes.
3) Development of technical specifications and recommendations (software, data format, a
graphical representation).
4) Collection and processing of data according to the designed framework and
recommendations.
5) Compilation of the Atlas. Relevant data and information on Atlas topic in the NOWPAP
region will be collected according to the design of the Atlas and recommendations, including
data sets, maps, tables, pictures and texts. After this it is necessary to combine all the
information gathered and to develop the required software.
6) Publication of the Atlas. After the compilation is finished, the Atlas will be put into the
DINRAC website and issued in DVD form to enable and facilitate data sharing and search by
the public.
2
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IV
Allocation of Work and Budget Allocation
9. The general allocation of work is suggested as following:
1) Recommending the leading expert and national experts
To do the work on this Atlas, one leading expert will be recommended by DINRAC NFPs
together, and one national expert from each NOWPAP member state will be recommended by
the DINRAC NFP from his/her country at the 11th DINRAC NFP meeting.
2) Design of the Atlas and development of technical specifications
The leading expert will propose a design of the Atlas and technical specifications, and invite
comments from the Focal Points of DINRAC, RCU, etc., through DINRAC secretariat. After the
approval of the design and specifications by DINRAC secretariat, the leading expert will
finalize the design of the Atlas and make practical recommendations to national experts.
Language of the Atlas is English.
3) Collection and processing of data
Data sources: available/published results of national and international projects as well as
other processed data and information from NOWPAP RACs web sites.
Processing of data to be done by national experts according to the designed framework
and recommendations.
4) Compilation of the Atlas
The necessary data and information on the Atlas topic in the NOWPAP region will be
combine by the leading expert in consultation with the national experts according to the design
of the Atlas. The leading expert will be responsible for putting all the data and information into
the Atlas on DVD according to the designed form and using developed software.
Concrete arrangement of work will be decided by the leading expert together with DINRAC
secretariat and national experts.
After the compilation is finished, the leading expert will submit the final electronic version of
the Atlas with necessary manual/documentation/booklet to DINRAC secretariat.
5) Publication of the Atlas
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The Atlas will be put into DINRAC website and issued in DVD form by DINRAC secretariat.
6) Duration of the work - 2 years.
7) Budget Allocation
Option 1:
The total budget for the work on the Atlas is estimated to be 27,000 USD, and the whole
budget is suggested to be allocated in the following way:
 The Budget for the leading expert will be 5,000 USD.
 The Budget for each national expert will be 5,000 USD and 20,000 USD in total.
 The Budget for the publication will be 2,000 USD.
Option 2:
Should be discussed.
4
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V
Schedule of Work
10. The proposed work will be implemented during 2014-2015. The proposed schedule,
allocation of work and the budget are showed in the following table.
No.
Contents of Work
Task Allocation
Schedule of Work (2014-2015), months
2014
1-3
1
MoU Signed between
DINRAC,
DINRAC and Experts
Leading Expert and
NFPs or Experts
2
Design of the Atlas
Leading Expert
and development of
technical
specifications
3
Collection and
NFPs or Experts
processing of data
according to the
designed framework
4
Compilation of the
Leading Experts
Atlas
5
Comments on and
DINRAC NFPs
finalization of the
6
Atlas
RCU
Upload of the Atlas to
DINRAC
the website
7
Issue Atlas in DVD
form
DINRAC
4
2015
5-12
1-9
10
11-12
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Annex 1:
Expected Content of the Atlas
(should be developed)
Item
Contents
Note,
Form of present.
Description
Introduction and manual
Text
Geography
Marine borders, bathymetry, rivers, weather,
Maps, textual
hydrometeorology, marine geology and geomorphology,
comments (TC)
etc.
Climate
Main parameters and its statistics for (1) coastal stations
Map, Tables,
and (2) adjacent sea areas: Ta, Tw, S, O2, wind, waves,
graphs, TC
sea level....
Oceanography
- Charts and vertical sections of T, S, O2.....( average by
Pictures on
month).
standard levels
- Time series anomalies of T, S, O2.....for each month of
the year.
- Coastal/ near-shore oceanography local features
Pictures, TC
(currents, sea ice, water masses, tides...)
Hydrochemistry
Charts of parameters.....( average by month or season).
Pictures on
standard levels
Marine environment
Marine environment pollution and its ecological effects,
Map, Tables,
state
atmospheric deposition of pollutants, river and direct input
graphs, TC
of pollutants, bottom sediments quality, toxic components,
tendency of changes, etc.
Biological
Biodiversity, fishes, biomass of species, birds areas,
Map, Tables,
environment
protected species, etc.
graphs, TC
Nature
Nature resources and their exploration, socio-economic
Map, Tables,
management
indicators, fisheries, nature protected areas, mariculture,
graphs, TC
ICAM
Data
Available data sets, time series, etc.
Digital data with
format description
Satellite images
Collections
Images
Links
Other relevant resources and products
URLs
Documentation
Some NOWPAP reports and publications
Text
6
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Annex 2:
Prospective forms of information by Atlas (an example)
1. Preparation of Charts and vertical sections:
1) Use data set in any formats:
ASCII spreadsheet data,
Argo profile and trajectory data,
GTSPP data,
SeaDataNet data,
Sea-Bird data in .cnv format,
WOCE and CLIVAR data in WHP exchange format,
World Ocean Database data.
2) Use Ocean Data View software (as well as Surfer, Keyhole Markup Language for
Google Earth, etc.) - see Annex 3
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3) View of chart
4) View of sections
8
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2. View of graphs and diagrams:
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Annex 3:
About Ocean Data View
Ocean Data View (ODV) is a computer program for the interactive exploration and graphical
display of oceanographic and other geo-referenced profile, trajectory or time- series data. The
software is available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and UNIX systems. ODV data and settings
files are platform independent and can be exchanged between all supported systems.
ODV lets the user maintain and analyze very large datasets on inexpensive and portable
hardware. Various types of graphics output can be produced easily, including high-quality
station maps, general property-property plots of one or more stations, scatter plots of selected
stations, section plots along arbitrary cruise tracks and property distributions on general
isosurfaces. ODV supports display of original scalar and vector data by colored dots, numerical
data values or arrows. In addition, there is a choice between three different gridding algorithms,
providing estimates on automatically generated grids, and allowing color shading and
contouring of fields along sections and on isosurfaces. A large number of derived quantities can
be calculated on the fly. These variables can be displayed and analyzed in the same way as the
basic variables stored on disk.
ODV is based on object oriented C++ software code and overcomes many limitations of
previous ODV3 versions. To ensure backwards compatibility, ODV continues to support
existing data collections and configuration files (now called views) created under previous
ODV3 versions. All newly created collections, however, now use a new and more general data
model and internal storage format. As before, ODV data collections maintain platform
independence and may be moved between supported systems. Among the novel features of
the new data model are more flexible metadata schemes, support for an unlimited number of
collection variables, user specified data types, and custom quality flag schemes for meta- and
collection variables.
The ODV data format is optimized for variable length, irregularly spaced profile, trajectory, and
time-series data. It provides dense storage and allows instant access to the data of arbitrary
stations, even in very large data collections. The data format is flexible and accepts data for
virtually unlimited numbers of stations, samples and variables. The lists of metadata and
collection variables of a data collection are defined by the user at collection create time.
Different ODV collection may be created to store the data of very different data types, such as
profiles, trajectories or time-series.
In addition to the actual data values ODV also maintains quality flags for all individual values.
These quality flags may be used for data quality filtering to exclude, for instance, bad or
questionable data from the analysis. Numerical values and quality flags may be edited and
modified. All modifications are logged in the collection’s log-file, allowing unintentional changes
to be reversed, if necessary.
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ODV allows easy import of new data into collections and also allows easy export of data from a
collection. Oceanographic data in the following widely used formats can directly be read into the
ODV system:
ASCII spreadsheet data,
Argo profile and trajectory data,
GTSPP data,
SeaDataNet data,
Sea-Bird data in .cnv format,
WOCE and CLIVAR data in WHP exchange format,
World Ocean Database data.