Data Management Standards and Policies
Data management overview
The Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN) is an interoperable online network of marine and climate data resources.
The AODN provides discovery and access services, primarily through the AODN Portal. The marine data collections published in the AODN Portal are wide ranging and all data collections are freely available to the public. The infrastructure of the AODN Portal builds on developments for IMOS and follows international standards and agreements for data/metadata formatting, discovery and sharing.
The AODN Portal is designed to be a single access point for ocean data. All published data collections can be downloaded through the user interface. Some contributors are unable to provide the necessary metadata and web services for interoperability with the AODN Portal. These data collections are still published in the full AODN metadata catalogue, which provides visibility of the metadata with information regarding sourcing the data.
Contributing organisations publish metadata with or without data to the AODN by providing ISO 19115 compliant metadata which is marked up with OGC web compliant services (for display on the AODN Portal).
AODN data policy
The aim of the Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN) is to provide open and free access to Australia’s marine data including publicly funded data as well as data from private industry and not-for-profit organisations.
The AODN Data Policy offers all data contributors a guide to managing and delivering data for publication in the AODN infrastructure.
IMOS data policy
The AODN coordinate the handling of data, managing its storage, accessibility, discoverability and means of visualisation. The AODN will host, manage and archive data produced by the IMOS facilities.
The IMOS Data Policy offers IMOS facilities a guide to managing and delivering data for publication in the AODN infrastructure.
AODN data preservation strategy
The Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN) Preservation Strategy sets out the approach to the long-term retention and preservation of the data hosted by the AODN and gives guidance on implementing those principles. The AODN hosts data collected by the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) and AODN (non-IMOS) data, by exception.
Quality assurance and quality control
High-quality ocean observations require standardised and sustained quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) procedures and practices to ensure data integrity, interoperability and uptake by end users. Click on the link below for more information.
IMOS data workflows
AODN, the data management team within IMOS, have developed workflows for each IMOS sub-facility to describe the flow of IMOS data from planning through data collection to data delivery and public data access. Click on the link below for more information.
IMOS NetCDF conventions
NetCDF (Network Common Data Form) is a self describing file format that is common for storing marine data. This section provides more information on IMOS netCDF conventions and standards.
