Decisions from 1/16 Meeting

1) Data Standards Working Group: Charles Seaton will organize a data processing standards working group to answer specific processing questions.

2) Metadata Requirements: Bill Howe and Craig Risien will be in charge of meeting external metadata requirements (FGDC, NODC, others.)

3) Standards Document: Charles and Bill will draft a CMOP data standards document that describes the data capture and processing procedures currently used at CMOP. We will post it on the website and disseminate the link via email. This document will reference other relevant items, such as the spreadsheet template to be used for manual data capture during cruises.

4) Data Releases: We will continuously maintain a "best effort" database on the main CMOP website. The best effort database may include new products or use new quality control procedures at any time. However, we will also issue "data releases" several times a year that act as "snapshots" of the data collected, processing procedures, products, applications, and other code. These data releases will be permanently available and will not change over time (so they may be safely cited in a paper, for example). Each data release consists of several dataSETS; for example, one dataset for the ADCP on the Wecoma in November, another dataset for the water samples from the Barnes in August. Each dataset will be associated with a formal metadata record adhering to relevant standards. Each dataset will also be available for visualization and download through the web using whatever products and application were available at the time.

4) 2007 Data: We will issue a 2007 cruise data release prior to the April 2008 cruise. The release will consist of one metadata "record" for each dataset collected from the 2007 cruises (up to 4 datasets per vessel per cruise; see below), plus a web interface that allows access to a "snapshot" of the data.