OIH

Ocean InfoHub

The Ocean InfoHub (OIH) Project was developed to build a sustainable, interoperable, and inclusive digital ecosystem for all ocean stakeholders. The project was funded by FUST and coordinated by the IODE Project Office of the IOC/UNESCO from April 2020 to April 2024. Instead of initiating a new database, OIH constructed a lightweight Ocean Data and Information system (ODIS) architecture as a tool to encourage data and information sharing and exchange. ODIS is the anchor space for data resources provided by the Member States and partners of the project. Through OIH and the co-designed ODIS specifications, existing and emerging data systems were linked, with the ultimate goal of coordinating action and capacity to improve access to ocean data and knowledge.

Some Ocean InfoHub Project achievements include the following:

  • Demonstrating proof of concept of interoperability, not just between two nodes as planned, but between 47 nodes from 28 partners, relaying (meta)data from approximately 800 organisations.
  • Open documentation: https://book.oceaninfohub.org/index.html
  • A Global Search hub, sharing over 130,000 metadata records, and ready to share hundreds of thousands more being integrated into the ODIS Knowledge Graph: https://oceaninfohub.org/
  • The ODIS Dashboard, allowing Nodes and other users to perform live status checks on their ODIS graph entities: http://dashboard.oceaninfohub.org/
  • The report of our fourth Steering Group meeting, reviewing the whole work plan (Oct 2023): https://oceanexpert.org/event/3929
  • The report of the final OIH Project meeting (May 2024): https://oceanexpert.org/event/4225
  • Close links to the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, particularly through alignment to the Data and Information Strategy and its Implementation Plan, our registered Programme OceanData 2030, and links to the Decade Coordination Office for Data Sharing hosted by the IODE.

Achievements in the three pilot regions of OIH (Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Pacific Small Island Developing States) include the following:

INVEMAR (Colombia) developed a pilot Clearing-House Mechanism for the Latin America and Caribbean region, in the context of the Caribbean Marine Atlas (CMA-II) project. This portal is integrated into ODIS and shares medatata from LAC member states and regional partners.

The OceanInfoHub Project worked closely with IOC Africa and African network partners to co-design the Ocean Data and Information System (ODIS) architecture. In addition to the ODIS network itself, four new databases were established in cooperation with OIH/ODIS:

Additional links for the Ocean InfoHub Project:

The Ocean Data and Information System (ODIS) has continued as a UNESCO/IOC-funded programme component of IODE, alongside OBIS and OTGA. This provides ODIS a sustainable future, which will inspire trust from all partners and attract many new partners to build a truly global ocean data ecosystem. 

Since 2024, ODIS has expanded to include over 55 nodes from over 48 institutional partners. Specifications to join ODIS are openly available  and published online: https://book.odis.org/index.html  

Additional links for ODIS are: