The Data Centre (OTNDC) recently completed a data push, bringing the total number of animal detections managed by OTN and compatible nodes to more than 300 million!
With so many telemetry practitioners reporting their data to OTN and its partners—currently and historically—millions of animal detections are being matched to their tag owners. These include previously unresolved tags that OTN does not have metadata on that are detected within OTN’s system (or “mystery tags”).
New collaborations are being formed by those tagging animals and operating receivers in every corner of the ocean and creating connections across OTN’s global network.
- The OTN Global Data Node alone has crossed 200 million animal detections
- There are nearly 10,000 active tags across all OTN compatible nodes
- 75,000 individual animals have been tracked over the last 20 years
View all projects that are part of OTN’s global network in the data warehouse here.
What is a data push?
To create meaningful detection extracts, the OTNDC and affiliated nodes perform cross-matching events every few months. This allows researchers to submit records and have detections returned multiple times per year. During the data push process, OTN’s databases are backed up, the website is updated, and detection matches are released to all relevant projects.
Steps of a push:
- Project record processing – quality control checks which look for incomplete records, consistency, overlaps, typos etc.
- Whole node verification – all records are double-checked for any conflicts, both within a project, and between projects.
- Detection matching – tag records are matched to receiver detection data.
- Detection extracts – detections are summarized and shared with both tag and receiver owners.
- Data backed up – a secure copy of all data is created.
- Pushed to production server – data is promoted to the final level, where data products such as the OTN geoserver layer are created.
- Post processing – publicly facing data is checked for accuracy before release.
Data cutoffs
The OTNDC selects key times throughout the year to pause new record submissions and focus on reporting data to OTN researchers and partners through a data push. Push events happen three times a year—February, June and October.
Your local node manager will provide your network with a data records submission deadline before each push. This deadline may vary between nodes but will be near the beginning of each push month. Any records received after the cutoff date will be processed after the current push and included in the following one. It’s encouraged to submit your data early as part of your workflow to make sure you don’t miss the next deadline.
Cross node matching
OTN partners with acoustic telemetry networks around the world, who work to maintain inter-compatible data nodes. This allows detections of tags to be matched across all nodes and increases the likelihood that researchers will receive the detections of their tagged animals. Nodes are all created and managed using the same methods, so researchers only need to submit their project records to one node to receive detections from all.