Managing Data and Information for the Arctic Observing Network (AON): The Cooperative Arctic Data and Information Service (CADIS)

The Cooperative Arctic Data and Information Service (CADIS) has been developed and implemented over the past 3 years to serve the data management needs of the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored Arctic Observing Network (AON). CADIS has brought accepted data management community standards, data archival, visualization tools, stewardship expertise and vision to develop a data management support capability for AON. It creates a foundation for long-term access to data archives, discovery, delivery as well as analysis opportunities by the arctic science community and other users. CADIS is a collaborative project involving the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The CADIS team has implemented a coordinated data management service to meet the needs of the Arctic Observing Network (AON). It has become the primary archive site for all NSF supported AON datasets. We provide support and augmentation to the primary AON data management web pages including links to meetings, cooperative archive sites and collaborating groups. The site is: http://aoncadis.org/.

CADIS reached a major milestone in fall 2009 with the release and implementation of the user interface for metadata and data upload via CADIS Data Portal. Primary features include an advanced metadata authoring tool, web portal, data upload tool, semantic search, dataset download, interoperability with selected arctic archive sites and visualization tools for general project overview information. User support is provided to assist AON investigators with all aspects of the CADIS applications.

An overview of the CADIS system will be presented that includes key features and capabilities. There are a number of lessons learned about developing, implementing and supporting the service to handle a remarkably diverse set of data types. In addition, there are results from a CADIS investigator questionnaire used at the recent AON PI Workshop that will be discussed. Continued enhancements to CADIS will be discussed as we prepare for the continued evolution of the network.