First ODINAFRICA-III Training Course in Marine Data Management

Abstract

The First IDINAFRICA III Workshop in Marine Data Management was held in Ostend, Belgium, April 11-29, 2005 and was attended by students from eleven African nations, representing the IOCINCWIO (Western Indian Ocean) and IOCEA (Central Eastern Atlantic) regions of the IOC. ODINAFRICA is a data and information project working towards establishing a lasting network of marine and aquatic institutes in Africa. Its headquarters is located at the central United National Environmental Program offices in Nairobi, Kenya. Through its information services to the scientific community, the project aims at promoting the scientific capabilities of this continent. The objectives of the ODINAFRICA project are as follows: a) Provide marine scientists in Africa with the necessary bibliographic and scientific literature. b) Make full use of the scientific literature available in Africa. c) Promote and facilitate communication between marine scientists in Africa. d) Promote and facilitate communication in Africa and other regions. e) Promote the scientific activities of the marine and coastal scientists within and outside Africa. f) Provide scientific information, and equipment, software and training to make full use of this information. Under the leadership of the IOC, and with funding generously provided by the governement of Flanders, the workshop was designed to address the final objective listed above. The workshop was organized locally by Dr. Vladimir Vladymyrov of the IOC Project Office for IODE in Ostende. The marine data management-training curriculum developed by the IOC's International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange Program (IODE) is based on an extensive collation of international public documents on marine data, formats, software, program and data management procedures, manuals, protocols, and associated tutorials.The main resource, entitled OceanTeacher, is a 1.5 gigabyte Digital Library of primary documents, that has been under development by the IOC training staff since 1997. OceanTeacher is the principal training resource used during data management courses, currently available on the World Wide Web and soon to be published on DVD.