The International Ocean Industry and Science Platform for Ocean Observations

Date/Time:

15 Mar 2012
11:40-12:05

Location:

South Galleries

Seminar Details
The International Ocean Industry and Science Platform is being developed by the World Ocean Council - the international, cross-sectoral industry leadership alliance on ocean sustainability - as a global portal for coordinating scientific community collaboration with ocean industries. This will provide the structure and process for facilitating scientific collaboration with industry in collecting oceanic and atmospheric data to: a) describe the status, trends and variability of ocean and atmosphere conditions and b) improve the understanding, modeling and forecasting of ocean ecosystems, resources, weather, climate variability/change â?? in support of safe, responsible use of ocean space and resources. The portal will ensure that scientific community interaction with ocean industries is coordinated, efficient, cost effective and is integrated into national and international science programs. Shipping, offshore oil/gas and other ocean industries, e.g. ferries, fisheries, offshore wind, operate thousands of vessels and platforms. Efforts to instrument these â??ships and platforms of opportunityâ?? have been important, but are limited due to the lack of an overall system to foster, plan and coordinate the strategic use of industry platforms. A comprehensive structure and process is needed to organize industry partnerships with science to scale up the level of data collecting from ships and platforms and expand the spatial and temporal coverage. The program will be developed in collaboration with national and international science programs and existing programs for ships and platforms of opportunity. The Platform vision: Leadership companies from a range of ocean industries are collaborating with the scientific community in the systematic, regular, sustained and integrated collection and reporting of standardized oceanographic and atmospheric data for input to scientific programs that improve the safety and sustainability of commercial activities at sea and contribute to maintaining and improving ocean health.