Towards a services based architecture for real time marine observing data

There is an increasing focus on implementing ocean observing systems to deliver information about how coastal systems are responding to change in the oceans. While advances are being made in collecting data, from automated sensors, sensor networks and so on, the same advances have yet to be made in the analysis and extraction of information from the data collected. There are advances in computing, modeling and visualization that can help but these require a new paradigm in how the observational data is stored, accessed and managed. This paper describes a services based cloud-computing architecture for the storage, integration and analysis of marine observational data from two observing systems; one on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the other near Phuket in Thailand.