Sub-title: MarCoSouth is in the process of developing a partnership with a new project of the IOC/UNESCO, the Ocean InfoHub Project.
The GMES and Africa Marine and Coastal Operations for Southern Africa (MarCoSouth) Project, through the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association (WIOMSA) and the IOC Sub-Commission for Africa and the Adjacent Island States and together with Coastal Oceans Research and Development – Indian Ocean (CORDIO), are pilot partners for the Ocean InfoHub Project in the Africa region.
The Ocean InfoHub (OIH) Project aims to improve access to global oceans information, data and knowledge products for management and sustainable development. The OIH will link and anchor a network of regional and thematic nodes that will improve online access to, and synthesis of existing global, regional and national data, information and knowledge resources, including existing clearinghouse mechanisms. The project will not be establishing a new database, but will be supporting discovery and interoperability of existing information systems. The OIH Project is a three-year project funded by the Government of Flanders, Kingdom of Belgium, and implemented by the IODE Project Office of the IOC/UNESCO.
The OIH will support the development of the Ocean Data and Information System (ODIS) architecture, which will provide an interoperability layer and supporting technology to allow existing and emerging ocean data and information systems, from any stakeholder, to interoperate with one another. This will enable and accelerate more effective development and dissemination of digital technology and sharing of ocean data, information, and knowledge. As such, ODIS will not be a new portal or centralised system, but will provide a collaborative solution to interlink distributed systems for common goals. Together with global projects and partners, a process of co-design will enable a number of global and regional nodes to test the proof of concept for the ODIS.
MarCoSouth, as one of the pilot partners with the OIH Project, aims to participate in developing proof of concept for interoperability with the global OIH network, underpinned by the ODIS infrastructure. Data types that MarCoSouth intends to exchange include documents from global datasets pulled to MarCoSouth, and MarCoSouth applications and service exposure of data products to the OIH network.
The benefits to MarCoSouth are:
- Greater visibility of products and services
- Providing open and FAIR access to data products
- Ensuring compliance and interoperability of services with global open data systems
- Exposure to the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development global data ecosystem.
- Greater awareness of MarCoSouth activities and services to a broader pool of potential end users.
For more information on any of the partners mentioned here, please contact:
MarCoSouth: Riette Pretorius (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
Ocean InfoHub Project: Lucy Scott (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
WIOMSA: Arthur Tuda (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
CORDIO: James Mbugua (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
IOC Sub-Commission for Africa and the Adjacent Island States: Mika Odido (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
