The Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN) Portal provides discovery and access to marine dataset collections, and currently serves over 240 collections, available to all who are interested.
The AODN Portal is the primary access to Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) data, and increasingly AODN partner contributions, currently with an equal split of IMOS and AODN partner dataset collections available.
Data download – popularity
The AODN employs Google Analytics and Sumologic to monitor activity on the AODN Portal, data servers and storage. In taking a closer look at the data downloaded from the AODN Portal over the past 6-months the statistics show that collection requests change through time, and awareness of dataset collections that are available on the AODN Portal appears to influence data downloads.
The following dataset collections have been consistently downloaded each month, and are all within the top 10 of dataset collections downloaded during the six month period of 1 Jan 2019 – 30 June 2019.
IMOS Dataset Collections
- IMOS – SRS Surface Waves Sub-Facility – altimeter wave/wind
The first dataset from the Surface Waves sub-facility, published in January 2019, a global database of wind speed and wave height obtained from all the altimeter missions which have flown since 1985.
For more information on the multi-sensor collections, how to find them and why they are available, see the story.
AODN Partner Dataset Collections
Compilation of delayed mode wave buoy observations into a single National Wave Archive, to see more about the four institutions contributing to this collection, see the story.
- NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) Multi-beam Bathymetry Surveys
- NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) Single-beam Bathymetry and Coastal Topography Surveys
These dataset collections represent the first state government generated marine datasets discoverable through the AODN Portal, working with the New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH).
Interestingly for both the National Wave archive and the NSW-OEH datasets, more than 85% of the users downloading the data from the AODN Portal are from within Australia, and only a small number of downloads from people outside Australia. On the other hand, for the Altimetry wave dataset, only 25% of the downloads occurring were within Australia and 75% from overseas.
It is important to note this is a review of dataset collections that are downloaded via the AODN Portal, there are many other dataset collections that are equally popular, with data downloads occurring directly from AODN servers such as THREDDS and Geoserver and Amazon storage infrastructure (AWS S3).