OUR MISSION Create and implement a comprehensive,sustainable, easy to use Best Practices system for the ocean research and applications community. This includes: A sustained, open access, and internationally recognized repository with advanced indexing and search technology,also featuring DOI- based document IDs Best Practices in Ocean Observing Research Topic in Frontiers in Marine Science journal Community support for training and capacity building CONTRIBUTORS & SPONSORS IODE, GOOS, JCOMM, AWI,IEEE, IOOS, SAEON, SOCIBAtlantOS, INTAROS, ODIP,OceanObs RCN, Geoscience Australia LINKS OBPS OBP Repository Frontiers Research Topic OBP on Twitter Newsletter Archive SUBMIT TO NEWSLETTER

What's Happening in OBPS? Ocean Best Practice Workshop III  The third annual Ocean Best Practice Workshop III was held in Oostende, Belgium last week, followed by the inaugural meeting of the IOC-OBP Steering Group. The workshop brought together around 50 participants from 20 countries to share their enthusiasm and expertise to progress the ocean community to develop, share, and advise on best practices. Workshop proceedings will be available in the new year.   Share your Ocean Best Practice System success stories! We want to highlight stories where the ocean best practice repository has helped your work or otherwise showed a positive impact to the ocean observation community. We looking forward to sharing our first success story from QARTOD with you in the next issue of the newsletter. In the meantime, please email us with your example! Newsletter overhaul A new version of the newsletter will make its debut in 2020 with a shorter but more focused format. If you have any suggestions for what you want (or do not want) to see, please email newsletter@oceanbestpractice.org. We will also be taking next month off so the newsletter will resume in February 2020.

Community News

Strategic Statements

At its inaugural meeting earlier this month, the Steering Group revised the OPBS vision and mission and developed a trio of strategic objectives:

Vision
A future where there are agreed and broadly adopted methods across ocean research, operations and applications.

Mission
Sustain an evolving system which fosters collaboration, consensus building, and innovation by providing coordinated and global access to best practices and standards across ocean sciences and applications.

Strategic Objectives

1. Sustain the globally recognized and trusted system for the promotion, enhancement, visibility and use of ocean best practices and standards.
2. Curate this system for easy and effective development, use and dissemination of ocean best practices and standards that are fit-for-purpose; the OPBS should be responsive to community needs.
3. Serve as a catalyst for the adoption and creation of ocean best practices and standards through various means including community engagement and capacity development.

Ocean Best Practices at the AGU
At the American Geophysical Union fall meeting last week, Francoise Pearlman presented a poster on "The Use of Ocean Best Practices and Standards for Improved Interoperability” in which she addressed the  directions for ocean best practices and standards building on the community survey, the OGC experience and the outcomes of the OceanObs’19 conference on the coming decade.  There was good discussion on the subject with attendees from the Information Technology stream.

Summary from Oceans 19

The OBPS Steering Group hosted a panel at the Oceans 2019 in Seattle on best practices. Participants were Eugene Burger, Rene Garello, Kim Juniper,  Craig Lee and Jan Newton, moderated by Jay Pearlman. Dynamic discussion between the audience and the panel brought out several key message:

• Transparency is essential in the dynamics of best practice creation;
• Best practices are necessary due to expanding observations and turnover of marine technicians;
• If two similar best practices exist, then we need to have insights on which to use;
• More life cycle co-design is necessary.

Ocean Best Practices Q&A

During the ocean best practice breakout session at OceanObs19 in September, a list of questions was compiled on Sli.do for response by the OBP working group. We addressed a few of these in the November issue, and here is the next lot!
 

Can you give an overview of the level of support that can be provided to authors who are new to writing best practices?  

The OBPS currently offers templates to help communicate ocean best practices for sensors, ocean applications, and data management, . However, these don’t describe the process required to develop an ocean best practice. Indeed, participants at the recent Ocean Best Practice Workshop strongly supported the development of a concise guide to develop an ocean best practice. And yes, there were several sidelong glances about a best practice to make a best practice! Nonetheless, the Steering Group has now included an action item in our 2020 work plan to release a short guideline to inform the development of a best practice, building on from the process that is broadly described for a suite of recent Australian ocean best practices here.

Is there was a way to collect information on whomever adopts or extends upon a given best practise submission, since adoption will lead to further adoption?  

We can currently track downloads of best practices from the OBP Repository, but this doesn’t necessarily translate to use or adoption. Since the best measure of whether something is a best practice is community adoption, we recognize the importance of assessing this metric. It will be addressed in the guideline mentioned above, as well as more subjectively through solicitation and tracking of success stories and impact.

How does the validation of best practise work? Should there be a rating or peer-review process or what other methods are best practise to find best practise? 

At the moment, the OBP Repository is a single point of collection for marine methods, standard operating procedures, guidelines, and best practices. There is currently no validation or peer review system to assess these documents, but there have been valuable and robust discussions about options for this at all Ocean Best Practice Workshops held over the past year. Next year, the OBPS Steering Group will look at ways to converge best practices and recommend which ones are most suitable for specific needs. The nature of this recommendation has yet to be decided so please get in touch with your ideas by emailing info@oceanbestpractices.org.

Features

Ocean Best Practice in China
Yuan Lingling

The National Center of Ocean Standards and Metrology (NCOSM) is responsible for the management of national marine standards and meteorology in China. Affiliated with the Ministry of Natural Resources. NCOSM currently houses 127 marine national standards, 261 marine industry standards, hundreds of best practices. These methods cover the entire value chain of ocean observations across multiple platforms, including buoys, ship-based systems, and satellite systems. They also calibrate over 1000 sensors and instruments every year.

At the recent OBP Workshop in Oostende, Belgium, NCOSM was represented in a panel discussion on standards. During this presentation, we shared that that more than 20 key Chinese Standards and Best Practices will be shared to the OBP Repository in the next 3 years.

Integrated Ocean Observing System - PacIOOS
Fiona Langenberger & Melissa Iwamoto

Based within NOAA’s National Ocean Service, the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS®) is a national-regional partnership to ensure consistent ocean and coastal data collection, management, and information products across the nation. As one of the eleven regional associations within the IOOS regional network, PacIOOS provides easily accessible and reliable ocean observation and forecasting data to keep Pacific Island communities safe, support livelihoods and lifestyles, and sustain coastal and ocean resources.

PacIOOS collects observations on waves, currents, and water quality parameters, many of which are available in near real-time. In addition, a suite of high-resolution coastal, wave, ocean circulation, and atmospheric forecasts are being generated. PacIOOS' is certified as a 'Regional Information Coordination Entity', which means that PacIOOS is providing high-quality observations to national-level standards, extending the reach and ability of federal programs. Information about the certification process and associated standards and best practices can be found online.

Poet's Corner

Looking Ahead

Upcoming Events

• All-Atlantic Ocean Research Forum in Brussels, Belgium will be 6-7 February 2020
• Ocean Sciences Meeting in San Diego, California will be 16-21 February 2020
• OceanObs Research Coordination Network in San Diego, California will be 20-21 February 2020
• Oceans 2020 in Singapore will be 6-8 April 2020
• Fishing for Data workshop in Genoa, Italy will be 19-21 May 2020
• 2020 UN Ocean conference in Lisbon, Portugal will be 2-6 June 2020

Make a Difference

• Contribute to the Repository - we will help you to do it.
• Become a user of best practices - they are yours to use.
• Volunteer to be a peer reviewer and also contribute methods papers to the journal.
• Contribute to the newsletter – tell us about your successes and lessons learned and news from your organization.
• Participate with us as an associate.