19^th International CODATA Conference
Category: Interoperability

Information and Data Management at the South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON)

Avinash Chuntharpursat (Avinash@nrf.ac.za)
South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON), National Research Foundation (NRF), South Africa

The South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON) is an emerging research facility that establishes and maintains nodes (environmental observatories, field stations or sites). These nodes are linked by an information management network to serve as research and education platforms for long-term ecological studies. This network serves to provide for incremental advances in our understanding of ecosystems and our ability to detect, predict and react to environmental change. The core of SAEON’s activities involves the generation, archiving and dissemination of environmental data and information. To achieve this, an Information and Data Management Strategy was developed. This strategy integrates components and requirements of a data system via a common ethic/philosophy. It also takes into account local technological disparities of a developing country and in delivering a service, aims to redress these. Data would be produced at various nodes in South Africa covering a range of ecosystems. These nodes would have various degrees of autonomy with regards to research and data ownership and host both spatial and statistical data. However they would have to adhere to common guidelines regarding metadata and public access to information.