BODC's role

BODC is the UK national marine data centre and has a range of international roles and responsibilities. Collaboration with our European partners and participation in SeaDataNet-2 is an example of one of these roles.

We are a major contributor to the following SeaDataNet-2 activities

1. Research and Technical Development activities — we are a key player in the Technical Task Group and lead the development of controlled vocabularies for use within the SeaDataNet system. We are designing a NetCDF profile for use as an additional data transport format and assisting in the development of a biological data format for SeaDataNet.
2. Coordination activities — we participate in SeaDataNet training activities. At the 2^nd SeaDataNet training workshop, held in Ostend during 20-22 May 2014, we contributed to the sessions relating to the NetCDF format and the use of controlled vocabularies.
3. Support activities — BODC has continuing responsibility for the design, maintenance and ingestion of partner content into the following metadata service directories

• European Directory of Marine Environmental Data (EDMED) — a high level "discovery" inventory, providing a user searchable, online directory of data sets relating to the marine environment.
• European Directory of the Ocean-observing System (EDIOS) — maintained on behalf of EuroGOOS, contains metadata on European observing systems such as platforms, repeated shipborne measurements, buoys and remote imagery.

4. Partner activities — BODC provides data and metadata to the

• Common Data Interface (CDI), which provides an index to individual data sets.
• European Directory of Marine Organisations (EDMO).
• European Directory of Marine Environmental Research Projects (EDMERP).
• European Cruise Summary Reports (CSRs).