· The Austral University, through the Center for Dynamic Research of High Latitudes Marine Ecosystems (IDEAL), has a large volume of data since 2016, which includes oceanographic monitoring of the Magallanes Region.
· Data Observatory, with the support of AWS, will make this data available on a web platform for national and international researchers as well as decision makers in various productive sectors.
Every year, the IDEAL Center generates a large volume of data from scientific cruises, two meteorological stations and two oceanographic anchorages, installed in the Strait of Magellan and the Beagle Channel.
The Adolfo Ibáñez University (UAI) and the Austral University of Chile (UACh) will sign an agreement to build, with the support of the Data Observatory foundation (DO) and its founding partners, a platform that allows oceanographic historical data of the Magallanes Region to be stored, managed, curated and shared, from the Center for Dynamic Research of High Latitude Marine Ecosystems (IDEAL). The platform will come into operation at the end of 2021 and will provide free access to researchers and, subsequently, to decision makers from various productive sectors.
Every year, the IDEAL Center generates a large volume of data from scientific cruises, two meteorological stations and two oceanographic deployments, installed in the Strait of Magellan and the Beagle Channel. The latter include continuous monitoring (hourly data) of temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen at various depths (from 50m to 300m deep). In the case of oceanographic campaigns, research cruises carried out in October 2016, July 2017 and July 2018 are included, in collaboration with the Austral Center for Scientific Research (CADIC-Ushuaia-Argentina). These consider profiles along the water column of temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll concentration along the central axis of the Beagle Channel.
Data Observatory and its founding partners Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the UAI, will allow the use of UACh data generated since 2016, not only to store and standardize its format, but also to process, exploit and visualize in a more friendly way through interactive charts and maps with specialized filters.
Ricardo Giesecke, associate researcher at the IDEAL Center and academic at the UACh, explains: “As we have a huge amount of data and we want it to be open to the community, we partnered with DO to create an architecture in order to deliver it in an agile and friendly way. Access will be free, and through this alliance we hope to generate information that is easy to interpret and view.”
According to the scientist, this information will be especially useful for regional governments. In addition, it will allow to monitor the impact of climate change in the area and generate baselines to evaluate changes in the system associated with anthropogenic impact, using robust and validated databases.
“Magallanes is a very unexplored region of great interest to scientists around the world, as it represents a preview of what could happen in the Antarctic Peninsula in the future with the action of climate change,” says Giesecke.
The project is estimated to be completed by the end of 2021.
Álvaro Paredes, Datacube Developer of the Data Observatory Foundation, adds: “We receive data and process it considering different source formats to generate a single standardized database, which allows the interoperability of the system. Today we are working on a connection system and AWS is developing a proposal for the visual platform.”
Carlos Jerez, executive director of Data Observatory and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Sciences of the Adolfo Ibáñez University, highlighted this initiative of inter-academic effort. “This is a clear example of the contribution of Data Science to research and innovation projects, since there is a value in data with enormous potential to solve problems of regional and global impact.”
The project is estimated to be completed by the end of 2021. Currently, the underlying infrastructure and its implementation are being validated, as well as the data visualization tool to later integrate both deliverables for final adjustments. This project is scalable to process other UACh databases, as well as make it replicable and portable to other experiences in academia, industry or public institutions. It allows the extraction of information in an easier and more effective way, reducing the time required to start a scientific work or an innovation project and, at the same time, makes available different data sources in one place.
By the end of this year, the UACh with the support of the IDEAL Center will activate a Scientific and Technological Equipment Program (Fondequip,) also included in the agreement with Data Observatory, which will allow the installation of a Continuous Monitoring System in a ferry of the Austral Broom shipping company that connects Puerto Williams and Punta Arenas and that, by making six monthly trips, will provide data measured with sensors, on temperature, salinity, oxygen, oil, chlorophyll concentration, nitrate concentration, pH, microalgae toxins, among others. Eventually in the future, the UACh could extend the data processing carried out by Data Observatory, to its meteorological monitoring systems of the IDEAL Center in the Antarctic continent.