COOPEUS: A framework for improving the transatlantic cooperation on ocean observing infrastructures

Ocean sciences are struggling with the fact that there is a huge gap between the spatio-temporal coverage of existing observations and the requirements that results from the dynamics of the ocean system. It is obvious that this situation will not change within the next decade but that a new strategy is necessary. A truly global approach is needed to fully exploit existing and upcoming ocean observing systems. An excellent example has been provided by the World Climate Research Program where a strategy has been defined on how to improve the integration of existing observations and how to expand the scope of the climate observation services by defining so called essential climate variables. This strategy has been taken up by the IOC/GOOS and led to the Framework on Ocean Observing and accordingly the concept of essential ocean variables has been introduced. Currently, each individual ocean observing system is working with a dedicated data infrastructure that is optimized to serve the scientific users best. However, within the past decade the benefits of introducing standards for the exchange of data and information became obvious and are emerging. However, there is still a lack of harmonization across the different infrastructures and across nations. The scientific community is well aware of that but a promising concept on how to solve relevant issues has not been set in place. This is often due to the fact that diverging data policies, if there are any at all, have been set in place. The three-year joint European-US COOPEUS project has been started to address these issues and build a sustainable framework for future cooperation in this field. This project is supported by the European Commission and the National Science Foundation in the US to foster the links between the ocean science communities and also to develop future cooperative research programs. On the US side the EarthCube program imitated by the NSF has a similar agenda, i.e. bringing different disciplines together to develop a new mindset within the research communities and generate new perspectives on environmental sciences. Besides fostering the links between the research communities across the Atlantic it is planned to define user scenarios to explore the state of the art in the individual disciplines and ignite cooperation across domains. Some of the concepts that will be under scrutiny within the course of the COOPEUS project have also been considered within GEOSS, like for instance the data brokering approach that allows for coping with different ontologies and semantics in different disciplines. COOPEUS will build upon these experiences to make in the next step in integration existing and upcoming data information services in particular demonstrate the benefits of defining the minimum requirements on metadata descriptions. First results coming from project workshops are addressing the establishment of common, centralized services like registries and persistent identifiers. These services and agreements are forming the basis for improved data exchange based on and requirements of the user communities. To test these concepts as part of the user scenarios will be essential for the project progress.