Projects

The WHOI Ocean Informatics Working Group has become familiar with and is working with several existing projects at WHOI. We have met several times with each of these groups. Results so far include semantic ontology (establishing common vocabularies and meanings) and smart search engine development, agreements for data sharing, collaborative proposals submitted to funding agencies, plans for future proposal development, etc. The working group has chosen these projects based on various criteria including: interest of the investigators to further explore use of data informatics technologies, potential for work together to result in benefit for larger WHOI scientific community, proposal opportunities, etc. A number of these projects are listed below. We are always interested in talking to investigators about possible collaborations in the area of Informatics applications.

Finding Data Faster and Easier: BCO-DMO Semantic Search
One of the limiting factors for today's collaborative science approaches is the difficulty in finding related data sets authored or collected by other groups. The WHOI-hosted NSF Biological Chemical Oceanographic Data Management Office (BCO-DMO) is developing a smart-search capability to meet some of this need. The WHOI Informatics Working Group and RPI staff are working closely with BCO-DMO to develop an easier way for scientists to discover and access data sets related to their research. A part of this collaboration is the investigation into generalizing this framework for use by other WHOI research areas and investigators.

Image Informatics
Many oceanographic projects at WHOI work with still images and moving images. Projects like HABCAM, SeaBed, and the National Deep Submergence Facility, and the Marine Mammal Laboratory hold terabytes of images. Better and better technologies are being developed to automatically extract and associate metadata about images and allow scientists to do advanced searches. Oceanography needs to take better advantage of such technologies while also contributing lessons-learned by oceanographic researchers about working with ocean imagery.

Improved Access to Shipboard Data: R2R Data Repository
Access to and quality assessment of routine underway data collected by all oceanographic research vessels is a challenge for todays oceanographer. The multi-institutional R2R (Rolling Deck to Repository) project was recently funded by NSF to solve this problem. The WHOI Ocean Informatics Working Group helped to gain funding for this effort and plans to continue supporting it over the next 5 years. A common website dedicated to oceanographic data collected by all UNOLS research vessels can play a vital role in coordinating cruise-related raw data and data products.

Reuse of Oceanographic Data: SW06 Data Repurposing
Reuse of data collected within one science discipline by investigators in another science discipline can oftentimes be difficult. The Shallow Water 2006 (SW06) project is hoping to make a large volume of highly diverse physical oceanographic data available to a wide spectrum of researchers. The WHOI Ocean Informatics Working Group and RPI staff are working with SW06 PIs to investigate how content, quality, and overall value of such data can be more easily understood by investigators who are unfamiliar with the science discipline for which it was originally collected.

Last updated: June 4, 2010