Poster Presentation Australian Marine Sciences Association Annual Meeting 2023

The Biological Ocean Observer: An online portal for the visualisation of IMOS data (#408)

Jason D Everett 1 2 3 , Claire H Davies 4 , Anthony J Richardson 1 3
  1. The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
  2. Centre for Marine Science and Innovation (CMSI), The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
  3. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Environment, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
  4. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Environment, Hobart, TAS, Australia

Access to online marine data streams has never been easier, however the number of files and range of formatting creates complexities around data download, integration and visualisation. Not everyone has the necessary skills to make use of the data resources available. Here we demonstrate a solution to simplify these processes for all users: the Biological Ocean Observer (BOO). BOO is an online Shiny application that Integrates, Analyses and Visualises IMOS data so that everyone can better understand, query and interpret it. BOO increases our ability to deliver impact by expanding the analysis and visualisation of biological data to a broad audience and accelerating the generation of scientific insights. BOO uses internationally recognised programming frameworks (R and Shiny), and all code are freely available, facilitating further development and collaboration with the community. The Shiny application is underpinned by an R-package (planktonr) that allows power-users to replicate the data and visualisations they access from BOO, but also to modify the analysis and visualisation for their use case. This tool is designed to be used by a wide range of national stakeholders including science researchers, natural resource managers, policy makers, educators and the general public – including you!