The UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) is to host an initial workshop for the new "Smart Ocean / Smart Industries" program developed by the World Ocean Council (WOC).
The program involves companies from maritime industries working to expand and co-ordinate the collection of ocean and atmospheric information from ships and offshore structures. According to the WOC, the need to better understand and monitor the ocean and climate has never been greater, but government and scientific institutions have limited facilities and resources to obtain marine and atmospheric data.
Meanwhile, shipping, fisheries, offshore energy and other ocean industries operate thousands of vessels and platforms, providing tremendous potential for cost-effectively collecting ocean and climate data. The WOC program will establish the role of companies from a range of ocean industries in the systematic, regular, sustained and integrated collection and reporting of standardised oceanographic and atmospheric data.
This will provide critical information to scientific programs that improve the safety and sustainability of commercial activities at sea and contribute to maintaining and improving ocean health. Expanded information will help improve the modeling and predictability of weather, ocean conditions and climate change, and will support responsible use of ocean space and resources – with clear benefits for science, government, society, and business. The program is being developed in close collaboration with national and international ocean and climate observations programs, and with existing voluntary observation programs.
A WOC working group co-chaired by AP Moeller-Maersk and Transocean is beginning work to develop a comprehensive structure and process to scale up data collection from "smart" ships and platforms and expand the spatial and temporal extent of observations by leadership companies.
The IOC will host the initial WOC "Smart Ocean / Smart Industries" workshop in Paris on December 12-13. The meeting will convene industry, science and government representatives. Interested parties should contact: paul.holthus@oceancouncil.org