The OmegaCAM wide-field optical imager is the sole instrument on the VLT Survey Telescope at ESOs Paranal Observatory. The instrument, as well as the telescope, have been designed for surveys with very good, natural seeing-limited image quality over
a 1 square degree field. OmegaCAM was commissioned in 2011 and has been observing three ESO Public Surveys in parallel since October 15, 2011. We use the Astro-WISE information system to monitor the calibration of the observatory and to produce the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS). Here we describe the photometric monitoring procedures in Astro-WISE and give a first impression of OmegaCAMs photometric behavior as a function of time. The long-term monitoring of the observatory goes hand in hand with the KiDS survey production in Astro-WISE. KiDS is observed under partially non-photometric conditions. Based on the first year of OmegaCAM operations it is expected that a $sim 1%-2%$ photometric homogeneity will be achieved for KiDS.
In this paper we describe the way the Astro-WISE information system (or simply Astro-WISE) supports the data from a wide range of in- struments and combines multiple surveys and their catalogues. Astro-WISE allows ingesting of data from any optical i
nstrument, survey or catalogue, pro- cessing of this data to create new catalogues and bringing in data from different surveys into a single catalogue, keeping all dependencies back to the original data. Full data lineage is kept on each step of compiling a new catalogue with an ability to add a new data source recursively. With these features, Astro- WISE allows not only combining and retrieving data from multiple surveys, but performing scientific data reduction and data mining down to the rawest data in the data processing chain within a single environment.
The Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS) is a 1500 square degree optical imaging survey with the recently commissioned OmegaCAM wide-field imager on the VLT Survey Telescope (VST). A suite of data products will be delivered to ESO and the community by the KiDS
survey team. Spread over Europe, the KiDS team uses Astro-WISE to collaborate efficiently and pool hardware resources. In Astro-WISE the team shares, calibrates and archives all survey data. The data-centric architectural design realizes a dynamic live archive in which new KiDS survey products of improved quality can be shared with the team and eventually the full astronomical community in a flexible and controllable manner
