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Terms of Reference

GE-BICH Mission Statement is “To promote greater integration of biological, chemical, and physical data within IODE’s network of national data centres in support of biogeochemical research, and ecosystem studies and management.”

The Terms of Reference of the Group, last revised in January 2009 and adopted by the IODE-XX are

    1. To provide an international forum, raising awareness about new initiatives, best practices, and emerging standards for biological and chemical data management and exchange practices;
    2. To collate and compile guidelines, supporting the integrated management and quality control of biological and chemical data in IODE’s network of national oceanographic data centres;
    3. To contribute to the development of standards, controlled vocabularies, and recommended practices for the management, interoperability and exchange of biological and chemical data, supporting the scientific and operational requirements of the community;
    4. To encourage data centres to compile inventories of past and present biological and chemical data holdings, and make data available to global databases and specialised data portals;
    5. To encourage data holders to contribute data to data centres for the creation of regional and global integrated oceanographic databases incorporating physical, chemical and biological data;
    6. To communicate the results from the GE to the wider community of data managers, providers and users.