ODINAFRICA II Combined Madagascar Marine Atlas Workshop and Remedial Training Course in Marine Data Management for Comores

Abstract

A special workshop has been held in Tulear, Madagascar from June 30 to July 11, 2003 as part of the ODINAFRICA-II program for ocean data management. This report describes the content and accomplishments of that special workshop. The workshop programme was based on the IOC OceanTeacher capacity building tool - an extensive collation of documents on marine data, formats, software, program and data management procedures, manuals, protocols, and associated tutorials. The workshop addressed the specific marine data identification, reformatting, and analysis methods needed by Madagascar’s National Oceanographic Data Centre to develop a new national marine atlas. The remedial course (held simultaneously) addressed the training needs of the ODINAFRICA-II student from Comores who has experienced severe communications and travel difficulties in the past, and who requested “oneon- one” training to reach parity with the other students.