OGS is recognised as the Italian National Oceanographic Data Centre (OGS-NODC) within the International Oceanographic Data Exchange System of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) since 27/6/2002.
OGS as part of the IOC's network of National Oceanographic Data Centres has designated responsibility for the coordination of data and information management at national level. The oceanographic database covers the fields of marine physics, chemical, biological, underway geophysics and general information on Italian oceanographic cruises and data sets.
The data center manages large sets of marine and ocean data, originating from our institute and from other parties in our country, in a variety of data management systems and configurations. A major objective and challenge is to provide an integrated and harmonised overview and access to these data resources.
NODC provides data products as vertical climatological profiles for the Mediterranean (MEDAR climatology) and as horizontal maps computed using DIVA (Data-Interpolating Variational Analysis) for the Adriatic Sea (Adriatic climatology. The preparation of the products has also improved the quality, the consistency and the overall coherence of the data available.
The metadata services give overviews of marine organisations in Europe and their engagement in marine research projects, managing large datasets, and data acquisition by research vessels and monitoring programmes for the European seas and global oceans. These directories are compiled from national contributions, collated by NODC for their country. Each of the directories has its own origin; however as part of SeaDataNet all directories have been harmonised in use of syntax, semantics and tools.
Books and journal articles have long benefited from an infrastructure that makes them easy to cite, a key element in the process of research and academic discourse. NODC believes that citing data should be possible in the same way as citing other sources of information, such as articles and books. Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) of datasets assure reliable, predictable, and unambiguous citation and access to data.