Poised to build on a rich legacy of undersea exploration, discovery, and research, NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (OER) builds from the merger of two unique NOAA programs—NOAA’s Undersea Research Program (NURP) and the Office of Ocean Exploration (OE). The Office provides NOAA and the Nation with a unique capability to discover and investigate new ocean areas and phenomena, conduct the basic research required to capitalize on discoveries, and to seamlessly disseminate data and information-rich products to a multitude of users.

The volume and diversity of scientific data and information collected during ocean exploration activities is extensive, and presents a unique data management challenge.  Led by the National Oceanographic Data Center , NOAA established an intramural Integrated Product Team (IPT)  to address these challenges. The IPT has provided a framework for exploration data management since 2002, and has developed several Data Management Systems and Tools, some of which provide extensible functions to other applications.

The foundation of exploration data management is the Cruise Information Management System (CIMS) , a unique end-to-end data management system for metadata, data, multimedia and products resulting from OER-sponsored expeditions. CIMS provides software tools—

1. for expedition coordinators to create cruise planning instructions,
2. for expedition data managers to document the operations, activities, and events happening at sea, and
3. for automated generation of standard metadata to facilitate information discovery and access.

The Digital Atlas provides access to data and information resources for Ocean Exploration Expeditions from 2001 through the present.