The National Data Buoy Center Data Assembly Center (NDBC DAC): A Component of the Network of Marine Networks

In 2009 the National Research Council published its report: Observing Weather and Climate from the Ground Up—A Nationwide Network of Networks on the then current state of mesoscale networks in the United States, meeting observing requirements, and data availability. The Report identified the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Data Buoy Center's (NDBC) role in collecting, performing quality control of, and disseminating observations in real-time from a variety of marine networks. This groundbreaking initiative pre-dates the NRC Report by 7 years and has grown steadily to stretch from Western Pacific to the eastern Caribbean Sea, encompassing more than 45 networks.

Beginning in 2002, the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) began receiving marine buoy data from the Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System and posting them to the web and transmitting them to forecast centers over the Global Telecommunications System (GTS). That effort has expanded and NDBC now receives data from ocean observing systems associated with all eleven Regional Associations and is considered the Integrated Ocean Observing System Data Assembly Center (IOOS-DAC).

NDBC developed formats to accommodate data from various systems. The latest efforts include receiving data in xml format. All data are quality controlled using the same algorithms as used for NDBC data, effectively stamping the data as quality data.

NDBC notifies ocean observing system owners of communications outages and data quality failures via email within hours of an event. Most ocean observing systems do not provide the 24/7 monitoring of data that the NDBC DAC does. NDBC DAC also maintains partner data quality control, station, and sensor health on the NDBC website for all partners to view.

NDBC continues to accept data from federal, IOOS, and international partners to make it available to the modeling and forecast centers and directly to forecasters at Weather and Marine Forecast Offices. NDBC is also committed to continuing to provide the data providers with excellent service in providing their data to forecast centers and the public and with helping to keep the health of ocean observing systems at a high level.