'Australian marine data, publicly available'

What is the AODN?

The vision of the AODN was articulated in 2005 by the Australian Ocean Data Centre Joint Facility (AODCJF), a joint venture between the six Commonwealth Agencies[1] with primary responsibility for marine data. This was “to put in place, by June 2011, an interoperable, online network of marine and coastal data resources, including data from the six AODCJF partner agencies, supported by standards-based metadata, which will serve data to support Australia's science, education, environmental management and policy needs: Australia's digital ocean commons.”

What is the AODN Development Office?

The AODN Development Office is hosted by the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) eMarine Information Infrastructure Facility (eMII).

The AODN Office has been established with funds from the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR) and the Australian National Data Service (ANDS). The AODN Office was formally established on the 1 July 2010, and has a Director - Roger Proctor, a Manager - Patrick Gorringe (both working part-time on AODN) and five full-time staff – Wiebke Ebeling, Pauline Mak, Alicja Mosbauer, Andrew Walsh and, currently, one vacancy. The objectives of the AODN Development Office are two-fold:

1) to populate the AODN with publicly funded data and to make this accessible to as wide a community as possible;

2) to encourage, and develop, the culture of data sharing across the marine science community of Australia.