The NOAA/NCEI Data Assembly Center for NOAA/OMAO’s ship and aircraft fleet

The National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) has developed a Data Assembly Center (DAC) that will acquire, quality assure, and provide specialized discovery to operational data from NOAA’s oceanic and atmospheric fleet. NOAA’s Office of Marine and Aviation Operations (OMAO) maintains the United States’ largest oceanographic research fleet with a wide array of specialized research ships and aircraft. The suite of platforms support routine and unique research activities, such as hydrographic/fisheries surveys, coastal mapping, and severe weather prediction. OMAO owns and maintains operational instrumentation aboard these platforms that collect a wide range of environmental data such as air temperature, sea surface temperature, and ocean bathymetry. OMAO manages most of these data aboard ocean-based platforms using software developed by OMAO - the Scientific Computer System (SCS). Since the late 1990s, NCEI has been regularly acquiring real time data from SCS post mission and providing basic data discovery and access. As part of the newly developed DAC, NCEI conducts rigorous quality assessment analysis and provides reports on SCS data submission completeness and metadata quality. All data, metadata, and associated documentation are made available within 24-48 hours through a public-facing cruise catalog. NCEI maintains a help desk tool to track, share, and resolve issues related to the management and quality monitoring of data collected by these platforms with the shipboard technicians. Upcoming projects include similar management of other data streams from the OMAO Fleet, such as from Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCP), Conductivity Temperature Depth (CTD) profilers, and aircraft instrumentation. The DAC will also start to include access to post processed data as applicable including data collected by the visiting scientific party via the cruise catalog.