The quality flag proposal discussed at the first IODE QA/QC workshop of chemical oceanographic data has been further developed during the 5th Session of the GE-BICH. The proposal has now been finalised and submitted for experts and community review via the IODE/JCOMM's  Ocean Data Standards process. See http://www.oceandatastandards.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&Itemid=0.

 

The proposed scheme is a two-layer scheme. The primary level is similar to the QC flag scale presented in the report of the 1st IODE QA/QC workshop and presented at the IMDIS 2010 conference. However it has been modified to avoid the use of "0" as a code. Also, it is now explicitly coupled to a secondary level flag which provides information justifying the quality flags applied at the primary level and information on data processing history.

 

The new primary level scale is as follows:

 

Code	Definition	Test criteria
1	Good	Passed all documented required QC tests
2	Not evaluated, not available, or unknown	Used for data when no QC test performed or the information on quality is not available
3	Questionable/suspect	Failed non-critical documented metric or subjective test(s)
4	Bad	Failed critical documented QC test(s) or as assigned by the data producer
9	Missing data	Used as place holder when data are missing.

 

The secondary level flag will resolve to descriptions of quality control tests performed and data processing history examples of which can be found in the pages below.