standardization of environmental data and information - International ...

example, a massive plankton recording system that had been running in the
United Kingdom for a hundred years.
Smith interjected that there were different reasons for changing a
protocol. One might be the discovery of a method that narrowed the error
bar, giving a better-defined answer with a gain in statistical power but
without necessarily forfeiting comparability. On the other hand, if a method
was found to be introducing a bias toward one side of the population mean,
which often happened, it might not be advisable to adopt in mid-stream
another method biased toward the other side that would make the dataset
lose its comparability. Whatever recommendations were made, enough
flexibility was needed to leave room for future improvements in technology,
without losing sight of the long-term nature of a dataset.
A participant observed that, unlike the usual situation with
individual scientific investigators, seabed exploration involved about eight
groups working in the same area with the common goal of trying to assess
the environmental impact of a proposed activity. Therefore, a degree of
comparability was needed so that the work done by one contractor could be
added to the work of others. For example, if someone was measuring
primary productivity or studying the abundance of a species, the numbers
should be comparable to similar research by others. However, if people
were using different sieve sizes, the numbers would not be comparable.
Thus, there was a responsibility to maintain comparability. The Authority
had an important role in this area, which it could fulfill not necessarily
through a group of overseers but rather by establishing workshops where
results could be discussed and assessed jointly. Otherwise, it was easy for
research groups to become isolated, with one group adopting one
technique and another group following a different one. A degree of
exchange was needed, so that if a group was going to take box cores, for
example, and had a question about how to employ this technique, it could
send its scientists to work with another group that had been doing such
work. While the contractors wanted to avoid over-regulation, they should
recognize their responsibility and the Authority should act as a facilitator
through means such as workshops.
Summing up some conclusions that had emerged from the
discussion, Smith said that the Workshop should start by identifying the key
parameters that were important to measure and then list those for which
there were currently accepted standards and protocols. An easy way to do
this might be to identify protocol manuals or key scientific papers whose
methods were useful as a standard. These would include relatively non-
INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY 469