Michael Thun

Transcription

Marine organisms in the upper ocean are responsible for producing half of all the oxygen we breathe. But measuring and understanding the processes that influence life in the upper ocean is challenging. Researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute have been making steady progress on this problem. Dr. Francisco Chavez, a biological oceanographer, studies these processes and works with engineers on developing new methods for measuring and understanding the upper ocean. We conceptually came up with the need for a system that would allow us to easily look through the data from many of these platforms that were generating a lot of data. We use traditional ships. We use AUVs of different forms. We use gliders of different forms and types. We use drifters. Huge reams of data collected must be organized and made useful. Engineers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute have developed a software package that helps scientists manage, visualize, and analyze the data collected. The Spatial Temporal Oceanographic Query System, or STOQS, is a free and open source software package that provides web-based visualization of data collected by all of these platforms. The database design allows us to store each single measurement and relate it to every other piece of information about the data; and it�s that database design that allows applications to retrieve whatever is needed to present it for visualization or analysis. The free software allows us to tie into a community of software developers that provides an excellent resource for solving problems. It also allows us to build a system that we can freely share with the world. We use STOQS for several of our projects. CANON is one of them and the Monterey Bay Time Series is another one. It is completely different from anything else that we have developed here at MBARI. It allows us to merge a wide variety of data from many different platforms and look at them together. Things like the Oculus Rift are really fun to play with as it allows a very immersive experience in a very large and complex data set. But what we really are moving towards is an ability to do deeper analysis of the data and then tie that in with these advanced visualization capabilities.