Colour of Ocean Data

The Palais des Congrès, Brussels, Belgium
November 25-27, 2002

Tentative Programme

• Monday to Wednesday morning: sessions with contributed papers. Every session is half a day, and will have 1 keynote speaker, 1 chairman (international), 1 rapporteur (Flanders). Rest of the time: will be filled with contributed papers (refereed by symposium board)
  • Session 1: Marine capacity building in Global Programmes.
  • Session 2: Biodiversity data: standardization and exchange
    • Taxonomic developments, development of standard species lists, exchange of these lists
    • Biogeography data structures and exchange, marine gazetteers…
  • Session 3: New internet developments, and their significance for Ocean Data management.
    • Review of existing XML standards for oceanography, activities of Marine XML consortium
    • Other relevant XML standards (geography, geology, taxonomy, ecology…)
    • Other relevant internet developments (Scalable Vector Graphics…)
  • Session 4: Ecological and community data
    • Structuring data on ecological processes, community structure, population densities
    • Exchanging ecological data
  • Session 5: Ocean data in decision making: case studies.
    • The role of data centers in monitoring obligations in the framework of international conventions like OSPAR
    • Setting fishing quota…
• Wednesday afternoon: panel discussions. Scientists, data managers and decision makers: their reciprocal expectations. Role of Global Programmes and IOC/IODE to generate data and catalyze data flow.
  • Part 1: invited talks (one from Scientist, one from data manager, one from decision maker)
  • Part 2: panel discussion; panel consists of three invited speakers of part 1, and others. The others will have five minutes each to clarify their views, and to react to the first three speakers, before the panel discussion itself starts.

  There will be ample space for posters. Posters will be shown throughout the symposium, ideally in the hall where coffee breaks will be held. Demonstrations will be possible during coffee breaks. There will be a time slot in the programme specifically for posters and demonstrations.