Research Value in Centralised Dive Computer Log Website?

[OzGriffo]

With my slightly obsessive nature, when I started diving recently, I did as much Internet research as I could on the topic of diving with a view to becoming qualified to do deep wreck dives to explore the plethora of local wrecks. This obviously led to me researching Deco theory and thanks to Scubaboard I managed to discover several resources including the wonderful “Deco for Divers” that made me appreciate just how much theory is still just that, and how much our models still seem to rely on empirically derived gradient factors. I still have a lot to learn about this topic, but it’s been an interesting start.

While I work in IT, I did do Mechanical Engineering at Uni, which also involved (apart from far too much Maths) some basic Chemistry, Physics, Material Science, Thermo and other topics that I’ve pushed out of my brain over the years. My reason for mentioning this is just to say that I think I’m pretty good at grasping technical subjects, but the finer points of Deco theory still do my head in at times.

Anyway, it occurred to me fairly quickly, that there is a massive amount of data that exists for researches to tap into when studying Deco theory that is probably not being leverage today. Namely, the millions of dives that are logged into recreational and technical dive computers. Now obviously there would be a level of dive computer logs that are studied by researches – when testing models with test subjects, and studies of confirmed DCI incidents. However imagine the massive amount of data that could be made available of real world dives if a useful percentage of these dive logs were all available in a single database for models to be run against.

Now I don’t think I am the first person to think of this, so I did some searching and found the IDAN project from the 90’s. I can’t seem to find any modern mention of this, so I’m going to assume that it’s dead. Technology has moved a long way since then, and the power and functionality available these days is light years ahead of 10 years ago. Plus it seemed to rely on dive-shops to do all the logging?

Now I assume that most people on this website would have at some time used a sports watch or bike computer, and the ability to upload those onto a computer program or website has been available for some time – just like you can upload your dives to Divelog or Macdive. But there doesn’t seem to be any Scuba specific website that I’ve found that’s not manufacturer specific, that offers similar functionality.

Now I see the potential for the collection of this data in a number of different ways: ie

1. A website run by DAN that interfaces into the common dive logging programs and uploads divelogs specifically for their research purpose
2. A website that mimics the functionality in most dive-logging program, and makes that data available (anonymised of course) to reputable research organisations

Now there’s obviously some technical hurdles to cross (I notice some missing elements in UDDF for instance) but the question is, would this data actually be of use to researchers? Or is it useless without the Doppler or other tests that researchers would perform on their test subjects?

I would have thought that DAN or other industry body would have suggested a standard logging format to enable this kind of program by now if it was of use.

[Duke Dive Medicine]

Hi Oz,

This would be a fantastic idea if we could get every computer owner to contribute every dive AND report the outcome of the dive, i.e. whether it ended in an incident of DCS. That would be an impossible task, which would result in selection bias. Project Dive Exploration is the closest thing we have:

Divers Alert Network

Ross Hemingway of V-Planner has a large database of dives... maybe he'll jump in and provide some insight into his experiences with this.

Best regards,
DDM