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Data access 

The SIMORC service gives an overview of and access to an increasing volume of  metocean data sets, collected by the oil & gas industry at various sites on the globe in the past and continuing at present. Major oil & gas companies are participating via the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP) and its IOGP Metocean Committee. They submit data sets to SIMORC on a regular basis, that are indexed in the SIMORC metadatabase and stored in the SIMORC database.

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The SIMORC service had its public launch in March 2007. At present it covers more than 7700 data sets from Shell, Total and BP, covering more than 3000 years of observations of winds, waves, currents and sealevels. The SIMORC system is operational to serve users in identifying and getting access to data sets and to extend its coverage regularly with additional data sets from oil & gas companies.

Search and shop for data sets 

Index metadatabase:

The index metadatabase is public domain and has a geographic–alphanumeric user interface to identify and locate interesting data sets easily. The index format is ISO19115 compliant and provides sufficient information such as instrument and mooring details, data sampling / processing and data quality report to allow users to assess the relevance of the data sets and possible related study reports to its particular interest. Users can store selected metadata of interesting data sets in a Shopping Basket, that is used in the ordering process for submitting their data access requests.

Database:

Data sets undergo a standard quality control and are converted to unified file formats (NetCDF and ODV ASCII) before being stored in the SIMORC database. Data sets in the SIMORC database are and remain the property of SIMORC participants, who qualify data sets in the SIMORC database as "restricted" (status = RS) or "non-restricted" (status = LI) data sets. Access to data sets is regulated and only possible for registered users. Distinction is made into users from scientific and academic institutes and other users (non-scientific and non-academic).

Users can search and request access to data sets using the central index metadatabase and the associated shopping mechanism. Once the data request is ok, then users can download the requested data sets in the indicated format. The downloaded files have a naming convention as b0nnnnnnnn.txt for BODC ASCII and b0nnnnnn.qxf for BODC NetCDF files. The nnnnnn is the SIMORC-Data-ID which is also included in the metadata. In case a user wants to oversee both data files and associated metadata, then the search interface of the central index metadatabase includes the SIMORC-Data-ID in the metadata results table, the metadata results export, the detailed metadata per data set, and also as a search criterium for later look-up.  

Formats:

Detailed information and documentation about the formats, the XML schema and common vocabularies used can be found in the following formats page.