1. BASICS OF DATA MANAGEMENT
OTGA – UEM TRAINING COURSE – FUNDAMENTALS OF OCEACOGRAPHIC DATA MANAGEMENT , JANUARY 2017, MAPUTO, MOZAMBIQUE
Prepared by: Harrison Ong’anda,
National Coordinator,
Kenya National Oceanographic Data Center (KeNODC)

2. MARINE DATA RESOURCES
Marine data management is a balancing act between the 3 major concepts:
Formats,
Software
Data
You need to become familiar with major resources in all categories, and how they work together. In years gone past, scientists had to go through numerous format conversions (including writing necessary code) to make connections.
But in recent years a small family of flexible formats, powerful computer programs and flexible online data sources have brought everything together.

3. Software Ocean Data View (https://odv.awi.de/en/software/download/)
Saga (
Integrated Data Viewer (
Google Earth ( OR
VISIT

4. Data Sources
World Ocean Database/WOD (
Online data archives/mixed formats
GHRSST (
Operational data
HYCOM – ( - provides access to near real time global data
Others, as time permits
Gebco ( _atlas/)

5. Formats NetCDF – Network Common Data form HDF GeoTiff .Shp
Example: Climatological or Operational NetCDF Satellite Temp, Chloro, and Sal Grids into Marine GIS: OceanColor Web (
HDF
GeoTiff
.Shp

6. File Names
You will become hopelessly lost within the short span of this course (1 or 2 weeks) and even in your own personal data collections, unless you adopt good data management practices. We strongly recommend the constant use of these elements:
parameter_
date/time_
depth/height_
location_
originator_
provider_
extras_
Limited Characters: No spaces, no hyphens, no caps (except T), include format in extras, if zipped

7. Area of Interest (AOI) Setting up an AOI can be based on: Coastline
National boundaries
Relief - bathymetry and topography
Environmental factors - circulation & ecosystems
Anything else of concern

8. Defining the AOI with signed decimal degree values
Top latitude (not "north")
Bottom latitude (not "south")
Left longitude (not "west")
Right longitude (not "east")

9. Making important auxiliary layers
Graticule - lat/lon lattice
Line and polygon frames - outer edge of AOI
Grid templates - to control data gridding

10. Adding important features
Political features
Other coasts
Trimming shapes to the AOI to reduce filesize and speed up mapping

11. EXERCISE – DEFINE YOUR AOI

15. Recommended Exercises
Saga Preliminary Setup
Project Area
Creating a Project Map in Saga
Creating Graticules and Frames in Saga
Creating Grid Templates in Saga
Adding GEBCO Depth Contours to a Project Map in Saga
Resampling Gridded Data to the Project Map Extent with a "Dummy" Grid
Adding Administrative Boundaries and Coastline to a Project Map in Saga
Adding Marine Regions to a Project Map in Saga