BACK GROUND:

The GODAR project was established by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) in 1993 in order to save oceanographic data from the risk of losing by degradation of recording media or disaster etc., and also to increase the volume of historical data available to climate change and other researches. The workshops related to the program were held in each region in the world in order to promote the project.

The large volume of data is collected at US-NODC/WDC for Oceanography, Silver Spring through the program under the cooperation of the IOC member states. These data have been made available internationally, without restriction, via CD-ROM and on-line as the World Ocean Database by US-NODC/WDC for Oceanography.

The importance of promoting the GODAR program in the region was recognized again at the International Conference for the International Data & Information Exchange in the WESTPAC region 1999 (ICIWP'99) held in Langkawi, Malaysia, Nov. 1999.

It was adopted to promote the GODAR project in the WESTPAC region (GODAR-WESTPAC) at the 16th Session of the IOC committee on International Oceanographic Data & Information Exchange (IODE-XVI) in Lisbon, Portugal, Nov. 2000.

In March 2002, the representatives involved in the data management in the WESTPAC region met in Tokyo, discussed methods to promote the GODAR activities in the region, and formulated the five-year GODAR-WESTPAC project plan.