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C O D A T A

Data on Natural Gas Hydrates

Approved by the CODATA 23^rd General Assembly in Montréal 2002
Renewal approved by the CODATA General Assembly, Berlin 2004
Renewal approved by the CODATA 25th General Assembly, Beijing 2006

Objective:

The objective of this task group is to develop an internationally distributed database for Natural Gas Hydrates, which represent an energy resource equal to twice that of the total of all the other hydrocarbon resources. The knowledge base in this area is exploding, and an efficient way is needed to deal with the data overload. For example consider the number of refereed publications in the area as an indication of the data expansion:

from 1900-1910 there were 2 refereed hydrate publications
from 1990-2000 there were 3010 refereed hydrate publications
this extrapolates to 7,500 hydrate publications in the current decade (2000-2010).

The CODATA international database is a method for dealing with the knowledge expansion. A review of the CODATA previous steps toward this goal are as follows:

2000 -First CODATA Hydrate Project.(F.Kuznetsov, chair) During this phase we met twice to establish the task group, chaired by Fedor Kuznetsov. During this phase of the work we organized the project, helped publicize the first local database, GASHYDAT (2001) developed by Drs. Klerkx and Dimitrov, who had European Union funding.

2002 Second CODATA Hydrate Project. (F.Kuznetsov, chair) During this phase we had three activities:

1) held seven world regional meetings to educate the hydrate community about the need, and to gain worldwide acceptance of the idea of an internationally distributed database:

Date          Region
27/01/03   - Russia
13/05/03   - North America
11/12/03   - Japan
20/02/04   - India
15/03/04   - China
05/11/04   - Europe

2) distributed a hydrate literature database of approximately 5000 articles, containing authors, titles, page numbers, dates, and abstracts of articles relating to hydrates.

3) reported on past work to establish the database in the hydrate session at the Berlin CODATA bi-annual meeting in November 2004.

2004 -Third CODATA Hydrate Project (D. Sloan , chair) . This phase is composed of 6 steps:

1. Berlin November 11, 2004 - Brainstorming meeting of new database taskgroup.

2. Trondheim June 11-12, 2005 - Organized the overall database system into the schematic shown in Figure 1 (explained in the figure caption). It was agreed that the project should proceed in two steps:
(a) development of a Gas Hydrate Markup Language (GHML), a communication language between the local databases in Figure 1, and
(b) development of a portal to connect the various databases using GHML.

3. Beijing, November 3, 2005. The Computer Network Information Center (CNIC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences presented the task group chair (Sloan) with a draft of the GHML. The GHML was enabled by the devotion of two full-time Information Technology (IT) professionals, who worked on the project since our Trondheim meeting. In Beijing, it was realized that the first step of developing, evaluating, and accepting the GHML could be completed in the current project (2005-2006), but the second step of developing a portal would require another proposal (the current document) for 2007-2008.

4. Kauai, March 9-10, 2006. Evaluation of the draft GHML by the CODATA Hydrate Database Taskgroup. While the CNIC generated the GHML largely using IT professionals with a minimum of input from hydrate experts, the task group's hydrate experts will join with with IT workers to evaluate/certify the GHML for international acceptance.

5. Beijing, October 21-22, 2006 - Taskgroup meeting for final approval of GHML, and presentation of the first draft portal, also written by CNIC.

6. Beijing October 23-25, 2006. Publication of final GHML at the CODATA bi-annual meeting session on hydrates, and statement of plans for the future.

It should be recognized that the success of the 2005-2006 phase depends on leverage of CODATA funding by contributions from several countries, indicated below:

1. The Computer Network Information Center (CNIC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences donated two full-time IT professionals (Jason Wang and Willa Wang), as well as several part-time workers to develop the GHML. China also donated part-time input by many hydrate and technical experts to development of the GHML. Without this gracious donation, development of the GHML would not have been possible. Both the CODATA and the hydrate communities owes CNIC their thanks for this gracious contribution.

2. GeoForschungsZentrum (GFZ) - Potsdam donated one full time IT professional (Ralf Lőwner) to the project for 2006. This was particularly helpful, since Ralf has past responsibility for data assimilation of the Mallik2002 well, which proved the concept of gas retrieval from hydrates.

3. The USA Department of Energy has supported participation of an USA IT consultant (Tom Smith) and partial travel support for some members of the CODATA tsk group.

4. The task group members contributed their time to the evaluation and development of the GHML.

Current Activities

2004 -Third CODATA Hydrate Project (D. Sloan , chair) . This phase is composed of 6 steps:

1. Berlin November 11, 2004 - Brainstorming meeting of new database taskgroup.

5. Beijing, October 21-22, 2006 - Taskgroup meeting for final approval of GHML, and presentation of the first draft portal, also written by CNIC.

6. Beijing October 23-25, 2006. Publication of final GHML at the CODATA bi-annual meeting session on hydrates, and statement of plans for the future.

At the 2008 General Assembly, we will publish an internationally agreed-upon database portal. This is the second (and perhaps the most vital) part of the two-stage process. After this development, the process will essentially be complete. That is, any nation should be able, with a minimum of effort, to add their database to the international network, using an international standard knowledge classification scheme, and an international portal to link the databases. The first stage will have been completed with the publication of the Gas Hydrate Markup Language GHML at the Beijing meeting in October 2006.

The deliverables will be:
. Publication of the internationally agreed-upon database portal and recommendations in the international literature;
. Implementation of the portal and feed back from the users;
. Article about concept of the Gas Hydrate Markup Language GHML in the CODATA Journal on Scientific Data and Databases;
. Organization of meetings for presenting the results of the portal implementation;

Task Group Impact:

1. Publication of a Gas Hydrate Portal to complement the GHML

2. Establishment of a Hydrate Distributed databases internationally connected with the Gas Hydrate Markup Language (GHML) and a portal.

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Recommended resources:

Members:

USA - D. Sloan, esloan@mines.edu (Task Group Chair)
Canada - J. Ripmeester, John.Ripmeester@nrc.ca
China - Xiao Yun, yunxiao@sdb.cnic.cn
France - Jean-Jacques Royer, Jean-Jacques.Royer@ensg.inpl-nancy.fr
Germany - R. Lőwner (corresponding member), loewner@gfz-potsdam.de
India - K. Lal, klal@csnpl.ren.nic.in, klal@mail.nplindia.ernet.in
Japan - T. Uchida, t-uchida@eng.hokudai.ac.jp
Russia - F. Kuznetsov, fk@che.nsk.su
UK - B. Tohidi ( corresponding member), bahman.tohidi@pet.hw.ac.uk

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