International Research Ship Schedules and Information Pages - Ocean Information Center
Original (non-English) name
Acronym
International Research Ship Schedules and Information Pages - OCEANIC
Citation
Abstract
OCEANIC - The Ocean Information Center - maintains a searchable database of cruise schedules and ship specifications and contact information. for research vessels around the world.
This project has the potential to become a focal point for identifying and locating research platforms, their data gathering efforts and their affiliated efforts worldwide. Modernizing our one-stop-shopping site for Research Vessel specifications and cruise information will allow other programs and institutions to link back to this data and provide a public site for posting their information. Many countries, institutions and/or agencies do not have the in-house resources or access to an IT shop or web expertise that would allow them to post their specifications and cruise information online. Our belief is that by providing users with the web-based tools and framework to enter and maintain this information, the research community, the public and the agencies and entities searching for their information will benefit.
We are already a linkback component in the SailWX site's Research Vessels tracking section, with links back to OCEANIC for RV specifications and cruise information. As a proof of concept, similar groupings of RV links have been created for the SAMOS project, the Voluntary Observing Ships program, the NOAA fleet as well as the European RVs and the Baltic RVs for the BONUS portal project. We can also provide similar linkback services and potentially future web services that will remove the need of projects to maintain a subset of RV specification and cruise schedule information. They would be able to simply populate their in-house data holdings directly from our database via web services. The ability to maintain this information in one central data repository and re-use it for multiple purposes can provide substantial time and resource savings for all. OCEANIC would do the work of creating the data entry tools, solicit updated specifications and cruise schedules from vessel operators and work with end-users in the creation of tools and techniques to re-use this information in support of their projects.