A proposal for a National Virtual Ocean Center

The President´s Commission on Ocean Policy has the charter to conduct the most comprehensive review of the national ocean policy since the Stratton Commission of the 1960s. The Commission seeks to identify the top-priority ocean issues (i.e., establish the national ocean agenda) and recommend the optimal organizational and technical infrastructure to accomplish the agenda. The ocean forecasting community has a loosely coupled mix of the government agencies, the commercial sector, and academia. This proposal for operational oceanography builds on that model. Government provides the computing and communications infrastructure, standards for quality and data communication, and a suite of baseline computing-intensive products. Individual government agencies provide ocean products. These agencies retain their identity in the National Virtual Ocean Center (NVOC). A National Ocean Partnership Program (NOPP)-like council coordinates across agencies to ensure that cross-disciplinary, cross-agency issues are addressed. Partnerships are social infrastructure for cross-agency collaboration. A technical infrastructure for distributed collaboration enables geographically dispersed groups to work together as though they are collocated. The infrastructure also provides seamless and transparent access to computing resources and data. Development of a vigorous commercial sector for the generation of products and their distribution is a priority. The government also facilitates the development and evaluation of ocean forecast systems by researchers from all the sectors by establishing test domains. The results of NVOC will be cross-agency leverage of resources toward multidisciplinary ocean issues and a competitive commercial sector for the innovative generation and distribution of products.