One measure of success of the overall South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Prediction and Modeling (SFERPM) program is in developing a data management program which facilitates data accessibility and sharing by scientific investigators, ensures data preservation, and develops networks that link distributed databases. A SFERPM Data Management Team (DMT) has recently been established and is in the early stages of designing a database to meet the above goals. Tentatively, the data management team will consist of the following individuals:

To facilitate timely submission of data to the SFERPM DMT and meet Interagency data management policy requirements, the SFERPM Program Management Committee (PMC) has established the following procedures:

• All data must be submitted to DawnMarie Welcher of the SFERPM Program Office within 12 months of the collection date. As such, if you have been previously funded (FY94, FY95, and FY96), please submit that data immediately.
• All data should be submitted in ASCII format to facilitate data transfer among different software packages. However, if you feel your data can not be represented in ASCII format, please confer with the Systems Analyst. Regardless, all data must be submitted on a floppy or uploaded to the FTP site at ftp.aoml.noaa.gov. Type anonymous for user name and your e-mail address for the password. After logging in, change the directory to ocd/incoming/sferpm (use command cd ocd/incoming/sferpm). Be sure to choose the binary option by typing binary then put your files in the subdirectory using the put or mput command. If you have any questions about using these commands, you may wish to contact your system administrator or Jim Hendee at (305)361-4396. After uploading the files, be sure to inform the Data Program Manager (welcher@aoml.noaa.gov) which files you have uploaded.

 In general, your data submissions should consist of the following four separate computer files:

1. General Project Information File. This should include the project title, the principal investigator(s) complete mailing address, e-mail address, and phone number as well as a brief description of the methods and techniques used for data collection and processing. The description should include at a minimum a method readily recognized by those in the principal investigator's discipline but may also include journal references from the open literature. Enough information to permit the potential user to evaluate data quality and/or special problems that might be encountered must be included.
2. Data Format Information File. Describe in full each data parameter (field) by name (ex: chlorophyll), units of measure, and field format and length (ex: character, numeric field). The field descriptions are essential to data translation processes and, again, they must completely define the units of measurement. Additionally, please include an estimate of the maximum and minimum values that could be encountered. Also, if you use a unit not generally accepted in the peer reviewed literature, please supply an appropriate conversion factor.

1. Sample Data File. Submitted sample data should be in computer-compatible digital media whenever possible rather than as printed documents and must be in ASCII format. The preferred format is space/tab delimited data files.

Ex:	91053008	28 14.6 N 89 32.6 W 0.90
	91053008	28 14.6 N 89 32.6 W 0.85

2. Instrument Calibration File (optional). Although it's not a requirement, we would greatly appreciate the information below regarding instrument calibration. This would not only facilitate transmittal and evaluation of data within NOAA's Environmental Research Laboratories (ERL) and to National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) but provide helpful information to other investigators. The information may include, but is not limited to, the following:

The principal investigator is responsible for quality control of his or her data before submission to the Data Program Manager. The DMT will do its best at additional quality control but only in terms of checking for transmission or transcription errors (not actual data).

While the primary role of the database is to support SFERPM funded investigators, at some point we are obliged to make the data public, first by submitting it to NODC and then by making it available on the world-wide web (WWW). Prior to submitting the research data to NODC (done by SFERPM), privileges for downloading data from the database will be restricted to SFERPM investigators through password protection. Regardless of the time period, publication or presentation of any data belonging to a participating investigator will require the explicit permission of the scientist who generated the data. Notifications to this effect will be made on the WWW site as well as in all written documentation about SFERPM data management. All principal investigators involved in the SFERPM program should make sure that their support personnel (including students) appreciate these restrictions as well. Moreover, the Data Program Manager will inform principal investigators before their data is posted to the WWW and give them a final opportunity to review the posting for inaccuracies or omissions.

Finally, in addition to the database, SFERPM is responsible for maintaining and updating the SFERPM web site. If you do not have a home page for your project (to which SFERPM can link), please provide a clean, updated copy of your project description to the Data Program Manager as soon as possible (and whenever changes or updates are necessary). At a minimum, your project description should consist of descriptive text including project objectives, methods, results obtained-to-date (including graphical summaries where possible), and future directions. The DMT will then convert this information to HTML format and upload it to the SFERPM web site. For those of you who currently maintain a web site/home page, please be sure to provide the Data Program Manager with the appropriate link. In addition, it is extremely important to include the following statement at the bottom of your home page: "Last Updated on _____ ."

Although there has been some interest expressed in producing a Geographical Information System (GIS), the SFERPM/DMT must first use existing resources to address baseline needs in this first year of the data management program. We are, however, exploring different options in this regard and would like to coordinate our efforts with meta data programs which are already in the early stages of implementation.

Last on 06/09/00
By Monika Gurnée
Email: gurnee@aoml.noaa.gov