The AMT data management experience

As the UK’s National marine data centre, a key responsibility of the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) is to provide data management support for the scientific activities of complex multidisciplinary long term research programmes. Since the initial cruise in 1995, the NERC funded Atlantic Meridional Transect (AMT) project has undertaken 18 north-south transects of the Atlantic Ocean. As the project has evolved there has been a steady growth in the number of participants, the data volume, complexity and the demand for data. BODC became involved in AMT in 2002 at the beginning of phase II of this programme and since then has provided continuous support to both the AMT and wider scientific community through rescue, quality control, processing and access to the data. The data management comprises a team of specialist data managers using a sophisticated infrastructure of software and hardware to manage, integrate and serve the physical, biological and chemical data. Here, we discuss the approach adopted, techniques applied and some guiding principles for management of large multi-disciplinary programmes.