standardization of environmental data and information - International ...

Explaining one of the ideas behind his suggestion, Smith mentioned
the work of the Hawaii Ocean Time-series (HOT) programme, funded by the
National Science Foundation in the United States. The data it was
collecting were being made available to the international oceanographic
community. An advisory team of scientists visited every year to look at what
had been collected and how it had been collected. The team offered advice
on whether things were being done in an optimal or desirable way from the
broad community perspective. This programme was run by Dr. Dave Karl,
an internationally well-regarded scientist, who saw it as a valuable exercise.
Smith thought that the exchange of seagoing scientists was an
excellent idea which the Authority might facilitate by helping scientists from
one contractor go to sea with another one, or aiding an outside group of
scientists to participate. It could do this through an exchange programme
under which a contractor might seek advice on some issue, for example by
asking the Authority for help in securing the onboard services of a scientist
experienced with a new analytical technique that the contractor was
learning. It might even provide travel funds.
A contractor commented that his group knew best what skills it
lacked and it knew whom to contact. He did not think the Authority would
know what was needed or that its recommendation would be better.
Another suggestion was to set up a protocol “cookbook” laying down
detailed methods, or at least minimum requirements, that every contractor
could decide to follow if it felt it had the knowledge and expertise and that it
did not need any help. Alternatively, the contractor could obtain whatever
outside expertise it needed.
Smith agreed that the Workshop might recommend acceptance of
published international standards for analytical techniques such as the
chemical analyses outlined in the protocols of the Joint Global Ocean Flux
Study (JGOFS). However, certain procedures could not be put into a
cookbook. To understand response to sedimentation, for example, it would
not be productive to tell everybody to monitor their experiments at intervals
of six months and one, two and four years; while that might be good the first
time, someone might learn more from a modified experiment by changing
the monitoring intervals. Given the need for scientific flexibility, the
Workshop should be careful not to be too constraining in what it
recommended.
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