The IBI-ROOS region consists of five countries: France, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and the UK. The region encompasses the Celtic Sea, the western Irish shelf, the whole of the Bay of Biscay, the European sector of the Gulf of Cadiz and the western Iberian margin. The western limit is defined at 30° W with the eastern limit defined by the European continent and 2° E in the English Channel. The northern limit roughly corresponds to Northern Ireland with the southern limit defined by the latitude of the southern boundary of Western Sahara (20° N). The goals of IBI-ROOS are [13]:
A number of systems for managing, archiving and distributing data already exist within the IBI-ROOS region but they are handled at national or institute level with poor coordination between institutes. IBI-ROOS started to build a ‘system of systems’ that integrates access to observation and model products on top of existing systems networks. It will build upon the MyOcean and SeaDataNet initiatives. The aim is for end-users to be able to access information stored at different locations through a ‘one-stop’ shopping point, which can also link up with global networks [14].
Within IBI-ROOS two institutes, Ifremer and Puertos Del Estado , joined their efforts to collect data from a number of observing systems such as profiling floats, XBT, CTD, moorings, and vessels(research and ferrybox) . Data from these systems are provided on a single portal, in the same portal and updated daily. It integrates data from French Coriolis data, Spanish data (Puertos Del Estado, IEO, MeteoGalicia, AZTI,..), Irish Marine Institute data and Portuguese Hydrographic Institute [15]. Data from this FTP site are encoded in the OceanSites netCDF format (see next section). The service is accessible from IBI-ROOS WWW site where all the relevant information are provided
IBI-ROOS has defined one format for the distribution of IBI-ROOS data OceanSites netCDF format described in the following manual
At present there is no centralised catalogue platform within IBI-ROOS (except the national databases themselves). The building of a centralised catalogue should be done in coherence with what is developed within SeaDataNet. In fact, the ideal solution should be to get the initial version of the IBI catalogue from the SeaDataNet catalogue platform and then set up a regular update process from the IBI-ROOS network to SeaDataNet.
The ISO 19115 metadata catalogue developped in Mersea and MyOcean has been adapted to fulfil the need of IBI-ROOS. It is available at ‘product level’ (different from platform or profile level). It summarises information on a set of data which are assessed and delivered for a specific purpose.
Quality controls are preferably applied by national agencies. It is important to send quality control flags to data users and it is important to provide them in a homogeneous way. Based on the work done within the GTSPP (Global Temperature and Salinity Pilot Project), Argo, SeaDataNet and MyOcean , the following table (Table 7.1) has been chosen by the IBI-ROOS partners by common consensus. [17].
| n | Meaning | Real-time comment |
| 0 | No QC was performed | No QC was performed |
| 1 | Good data | All real-time QC tests passed |
| 2 | Probably good data | Probably good data |
| 3 | Bad data that are potentially correctable | Probably bad data |
| 4 | Bad data | Bad data |
| 5 | Value changed | Value changed |
| 6 | Below Detection limit | Below detection Limit |
| 7 | in excess of quoted value | in excess of quoted value |
| 8 | Interpolated value | Interpolated value |
| 9 | Missing value | Missing value |
| A | Incomplete Value | Incomplete Value |
Argo real-time quality controls and Delayed mode QC are applied to profiling floats. These controls are described at Argo QC manual
GOSUD real-time quality controls are applied to thermo-salinographes data. These controls are described at: GOSUD QC manual
At present no common quality control practises have been defined for moorings.
At present quality control practises have been defined for drifting buoys within DBCP.
At present no quality control practises have been defined for ADCP.
The sea-level observations and quality controls are managed within the GLOSS program.