The Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) is a national collaborative research infrastructure funded by the Australian Government.

It measures essential ocean variables to enable science and research for the benefit of Australia’s vast and valuable marine estate and operates the Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN).

Australian Ocean Data Network

The Australian Ocean Data Network provides an interoperable online network of marine and climate data resources.

The marine data collections published in the AODN Portal are wide-ranging, and all data collections are open and freely available to the public.

Parks Australia recognises the importance of discoverability and access to scientific research data, and values the service that AODN provides.

The Australian Ocean Data Network contains data and metadata from IMOS, and also from many other organisations and individual members of the Australian, New Zealand and Pacific marine research community.

Data collection

The Australian Ocean Data Network’s marine data collections follow international standards and agreements for data/metadata formatting, discovery and sharing.

Data covers a wide range of parameters in different ocean environments, collected from:

• ocean-going ships
• autonomous vehicles
• moorings
• other platforms.

The scope of observations geographically span from ocean to coast, and across physical, biogeochemical, biological disciplines.

This provides a challenge to deliver an intuitive easy-to-use robust information infrastructure enabling users to efficiently obtain the data they need.

The objectives of the Australian Ocean Data Network are to:

• populate the AODN with publicly funded data and to make this accessible to a wide community
• encourage and develop the culture of data sharing across the marine science community of Australia.

Increasingly, universities and state government offices are contributing data to the AODN, and significant research programs like the National Environmental Science Program and the Great Australian Bight Research Program can be required to do so. 

The Australian Ocean Data Network portal

The Australian Ocean Data Network portal is the public face of AODN, providing access to IMOS data and metadata as well as marine data published by other contributors.

The portal incorporates a catalogue of metadata:

• a search interface using controlled vocabulary terms
• a map interface that can be used to interact with AODN datasets and offers data download in a number of formats.

Further information

• the AODN portal
• National Environmental Science Program
• the Great Australian Bight Research Program
• in-depth information for the AODN Portal Infrastructure and Data Management
• more about the AODN and data sharing.