Coastal Services Center

General Information Technology Architecture of the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS)

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The IOOS data transport strategy is based on a service oriented architecture (SOA). While there is some ambiguity as to how the local and regional observatories and regional associations fit into the overall IOOS plan, it is clear that data must move from the local level through some regional or topical assembly or aggregation facility to the national level, as shown below.

Technologies implemented in the Data Transport Laboratory (DTL) will be identified within a context of the regional or national data transport.

The IOOS data management and communications (DMAC) plan has yet to identify the first "operational" data-sharing standard or protocol. In its most recent guidance, the DMAC data transport expert team via the DMAC steering team identified two "preoperational" data services and one research effort. The first preoperational service is the open-source project for a network data access protocol (OPeNDAP) combined with the network common data format (netCDF) binary file format employing the climate forecast (CF) conventions. Second is the open GIS consortium Web feature service (OGC WFS) serving the geographic markup language (GML) simple feature profile. The research recommendation was also made to further explore the use of the simple object access protocol (SOAP). This guidance is evolving as the community works through various workshops and meetings. Data providers should continue to monitor the Ocean.US Web site and, more specifically, the Community Information Repository for future guidance.

In the IOOS administrative scheme, the regional associations (RA), as a group in the National Federation of Regional Associations (NFRA), represent the several regions of local observatories. The RAs will coordinate the creation of the regional coastal ocean observing systems (RCOOS). The RAs will contribute to a variety of efforts within the IOOS development including data and information management, modeling, application and product development, observations, interoperability, performance measures, public awareness, and education. For more detail on the RAs see the RAs page on the Ocean.US Web site. Local observatories include a variety of state, academic, and nonprofit organizations that collect data for their own local mission purposes. The local observatories augment the federal data holdings to create a better geographic coverage of ocean and coastal parameters. It is from these local data collectors that the DTL will help facilitate data access.