DATA AND DATABASES FOR DECISION-SUPPORT

Heightened awareness of the economic value of good quality multidiscip linary data sets, both to UK science and UK Ltd, has ensured that data management now has a high priority. As a result all new Natural Envir onment Research Council (NERC) Thematic Programmes must therefore have a data management strategy based on the NERC Data Policy. This paper describes the data management strategy for NERC's Land Ocean Interacti on Study and the GIS tool used to help implement it in one of the prog ramme's data centres. Many of the issues raised and addressed by this data management strategy are relevant to any major multidisciplinary p roject. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.