Ocean data manager handles large, diverse data sets

Abstract

Over the past three years, the Institute of Marine Science of Andalucía (ICMAN), which belongs to the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), has acquired diverse oceanographic equipment to perform a very intensive 30-month continuous sampling of a variety of biogeochemical and physical variables in the Guadalquivir estuary, a marshy area at the base of the Guadalquivir River in southwest Spain. Researchers carried out intensive sampling using many different types of instruments, which has generated a very complex and inhomogeneous set of data files to be processed and analyzed.

Ocean Data Manager (ODM) is a free software tool developed in MathWorks Inc.’s MATLAB software (versions 6.5 and above) that allows the homogenization of all those data files, providing an easy-to-use graphical tool whose functionality has been extended not only to import but also to filter, concatenate, visualize and export data to more convenient file formats, for instance, to Ocean Data View (ODV) software. Through this functionality, ODM guarantees a common framework for data file manipulation, aiding researchers and technicians that have to handle data files from such a different set of instruments. ODM is also very useful during oceanographic cruises for rapid campaign data visualization.