Information system for the Italian polar research

Antarctic research involves interdisciplinary sciences, it is leaded in a multinational context and it is globally relevant for the international community. The involved scientific issues are increasingly large and complex, therefore it is of crucial importance to foster the cooperation among scientists and to guarantee them the access to metadata. The development of an Information System for the Italian Research in Antarctica (SIRIA) has started during 2003, aiming at collection, management and dissemination of the information on the scientific research projects, carried out in both Polar Regions and funded by the National Antarctic Research Program (PNRA) of Italy since its birth in 1985. SIRIA is a database of metadata, allowing anyone interested in polar sciences to get the basic information on the various research projects and results. The metadata currently used follow the structure of the standard introduced for geospatial data and elaborated by the European Committee for Standardization. This information system constitutes the National Antarctic Data Center (NADC) for Italy and belongs to the network established by the Joint Committee on Antarctic Data Management (JCADM) of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research/Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs (SCAR/COMNAP) to promote the data management within the Antarctic scientific community according to the spirit of the Antarctic Treaty: “Scientific observations and results from Antarctica shall be exchanged and made freely available” (section III.1.c). This work describes the present status of the Italian Polar information system.