25 October 2024
The NODC celebrated its twentieth anniversary at the 43rd congress of the Mediterranean Science Commission (CIESM). The event took place in Palermo (Italy) from 14 to 18 October.
Founded in 1919 the CIESM is a unique coalition of 23 Member Governments and a wealth of marine Institutes, which aims to promote international, cross-frontier research in the Mediterranean & neighbouring waters: Atlantic, Black Sea and Red Sea. The Commission covers a wide range of marine disciplines thanks to more than 4,000 marine researchers from around 500 research organisations. This expertise is organised in six committees. The member states are: Algeria, Germany, Cyprus, Croatia, Egypt, Spain, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Malta, Morocco, Monaco, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey.
The 2024 edition of the CIESM Congress, which takes place every three years, was characterised by an ambitious programme to which the OGS contributed extensively. In particular, the NODC gave two presentations in the session on the analysis and management of marine data. Alessandra Giorgetti showed the presentation entitled “From floppy disks to modern databases: OGS reports on twenty years of the National Oceanographic Data Centre” and Nikola Holodkov illustrated the presentation entitled “Marine biodiversity data management for good environmental status assessments”.
In her contribution, Giorgetti reported on the most important steps that have paved the way for the NODC to be recognised as a UNESCO-accredited NODC in the 20 years of its work.
The first step as marine data manager was taken by the OGS in 1979, when it implemented a relational database model to collect, archive and analyse the temporal variability of marine data first in the Northern Adriatic and then in the whole Mediterranean. Since 2002, the OGS has been the Italian representative in the IODE/IOC of UNESCO: the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange Programme (IODE) of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC). Since the early 2000s, the international network of data infrastructures has grown rapidly thanks to the Internet, which facilitates the opening up of science. In 2004, the OGS established the NODC infrastructure to pursue the principles of open science.To this end, the Centre manages the assignment of identifiers as Digital Object Identifiers via the international DataCite consortium. In addition, it offers more and more
efficient services.
In his contribution, Holodkov talked about marine biodiversity data management (MBDM). In particular, he used a macro-zoobenthos time-series collection as a case study to outline the MBDM workflow. He highlighted the crucial importance of collecting and sharing data on marine biodiversity for an effective assessment of good environmental status (GES) as defined in the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. MBDM involves multiple steps and relies on interconnected systems. The National Oceanographic Data Centers (NODCs) are tasked with receiving and harmonising data and metadata, following internationally recognized standards. Data storage and access are facilitated by a network of infrastructures that are key to the MBDM process, including IPT, GBIF, OBIS, and EMODnet. After processing, the data complies with the FAIR principles so that they are findable, accessible, interoperable and reproducible.
“CIESM was a great opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of opening up data and its added value for the scientific community and for all.” Said Holodkov and continued “In this context, it is important to remember that one of the most important tasks of scientific research is to find solutions to current problems such as biodiversity loss and marine pollution caused by human activities.To achieve this goal, access to trustworthy data and information must be the new normal."
Learn more about NODC at the recent CIESM Congress by viewing the poster on the history and recent achievements of NODC and the poster on marine biodiversity data management .
