Long Island Sound Data Portal: Project Information
About the Long Island Sound Data Portal
The Long Island Sound Data Portal is being built with the primary goal of providing full cataloging, open access, and long-term preservation of data collected during the Long Island Sound Mapping Project. The backbone of the system is an expedition metadata catalog, which provides information on field programs (who, what, when and where), inventories of sensor data and samples, relevant metadata and the links to the primary data files which reside either within the Data Portal or at distributed repositories. Processed and derived data products are also served as contributed. The system is designed to leverage all relevant existing data resources and provides a framework for a broader distributed data system.
Anticipated Data Types
- Cruise Information (Cruise Tracks, Cruise Reports)
- Acoustic Data (Bathymetry, Backscatter, Subbottom)
- Sample/Station Data
- Interpretations (GIS layers)
- Maps & Reports
Data Access
To accommodate the different needs of scientists for accessing data, two data access tools have been developed; a text-based search tool (browser based) for researchers wanting, for example, to find specific data sets of interest or all data from a cruise or region; and a client-side graphical application, GeoMapApp, to visualize and explore data holdings in a map interface. The Data Portal is adopting standards compliant web services to serve data holdings in order to provide users with greater flexibility to use the data visualization and analysis tool of their choice (e.g. ArcGIS, NASA World Wind, Google Earth).
Data Policy
Due to the collaborative nature of the LIS Mapping effort, a data sharing policy will be required to ensure the maximum level of data management/processing interoperability and to provide for freely accessible data and derived products to the public. As such all parties shall agree that:
- All data (collected and derived products) will be publically accessible and freely available.
- Collected data will be made publically accessible and freely available upon completion of derived products. Prior to being publically available, any collected data will be made freely accessible to members of the LIS Mapping Collaborative, but not necessarily the public at large.
- Reasonable timeframes for processing of data into derived products will be established.
- In the event that a partner feels that some component of a data collection or processing step is proprietary, there will be a provision for an opt-out clause to protect any copyright or intellectual property rights. The existence of such a provision shall not in any way prevent the free and unrestricted access to any collected data, final data, or product.
- Suggested Data and Metadata Guidelines
