Towards interoperability: A sub-regional coastal ocean observing system experience

The West Florida Shelf Coastal Ocean Monitoring Prediction System (COMPS), maintained by the University of South Florida (USF), College of Marine Science (CMS), is one of the largest sub-regional coastal ocean observing systems in the southeast US and Gulf of Mexico coastal region. COMPS collects and disseminates near real-time marine observations to researchers, educators, students, local, state and federal emergency management agencies, and the public via Internet. Realizing the importance of increasing data accessibility, enhancing data integration, and enabling interoperability between sub-regional, regional and federal coastal ocean observing systems, we have made significant improvements to our COMPS data management system. In this paper, we describe implementation of Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) Data Management and Communications Committee recommended technologies to advance COMPS data system towards interoperability.