Daniel Martin, Senior Consultant: Technology Planning & Management Corp. Scituate MA 02066 tel: (781) 544-3803

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Ocean Service’s (NOS) archive of hydrographic data is a primary resource for many whom work in coastal and marine areas both inside and outside of NOAA. This data is critical to meeting both strategic goals of “Safe Navigation” and “Sustained Healthy Coast”. There are several significant technical hurdles to accessing and working with the data in a digital format that can now be resolved using existing and advanced technologies with the Internet. The large file sizes (>100 million soundings), the distributed organization of the data, and the security needed to maintain data integrity all contribute to the special needs of this project. To implement these technologies NOS has begun by developing a prototype in collaboration with several partners. The result of this project should be better development and analysis tools, a migration path from file archives to a database, an integration plan to include non-NOS data, and a distribution model that incorporates multiple data servers across the Internet into a unified structure.