As part of a megaproject to establish the effects in the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem to deep water oil spills in the Mexican territorial waters, a large consortium (CIGoM) is constructing a database that includes physical, biogeochemical and ecological variables, as well as the results from numerical models. The CIGoM data management team deployed a computational platform for the administration of the ocean data and geospatial services, composed of open-source standards and tools used by geographic information systems, hence standardizing both the ocean data and the services of the CIGOM community. This approach allows and facilitates the tasks of storage, cataloging, discovery, transmission, and visualization of information through well-established protocols at the international level, thereby achieving intergroup and interdisciplinary compatibility. The platform is capable of manipulating and distributing data of different characteristics (points, time series, trajectories, profiles, and grids). Also, each data set has associated metadata, which allows the creation of a digital library that offers information discovery and federation services. For this, we have developed an online process for capturing and receiving data sets (data and metadata).
The most attractive component we have is the web visualization functionality: we deployed the geospatial web framework "Terriajs" with which we can visualize by way of layers, the data of the platform, and data from external providers using standard services. The main advantage of using this technology is the flexibility of geospatial formats that we can visualize, such as: "Web Map Service", "GeoJson", "Cesium Language", "Keyhole Markup Language" among others, in addition to custom made interactive graphics like wind-roses, time series and vertical profiles at specific data points.
This platform is easily expandable, connecting to specific high-impact services and external systems, APIs or standard services such as "OGC Web Processing Services." We present the connection to services like search and rescue, simulation of oil spills, or the presentation of results of specific spatial-temporal analysis.
