Vision 2030 Challenge 8: towards a comprehensive digital representation of the ocean: strategic ambition for the Ocean Decade Challenge 8
Calewaert, J.B.; Sierra-Correa, P.; McMeel, O.; McConnell, T.; Fanjul, E.A.; Leadbetter, A. (2025). Vision 2030 Challenge 8: towards a comprehensive digital representation of the ocean: strategic ambition for the Ocean Decade Challenge 8. ICES J. Mar. Sci./J. Cons. int. Explor. Mer 82(6): fsaf072. https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsaf072
Ocean Decade Challenge 8 of the Ocean Decade seeks to create and make available an adaptive and dynamic digital representation of the ocean to enhance decision-making and support sustainable ocean management. For Challenge 8, success depends on our ability to create the enabling environment that allows diverse stakeholders to access, contribute to, and benefit from an inclusive and interconnected global digital ocean ecosystem. The strategic ambition has thus focused on defining the concrete outcomes and fostering the transformational change needed to create the enabling environment and initial digital assets by 2030 that will allow us to generate a comprehensive digital representation of the Ocean. This requires access to the global collection of interlinked and interoperable digital assets, including FAIR data, information, models, software, applications, as well as the digital architectures and infrastructures which support and connect them. Only collectively, will these assets allow us to better understand the ocean's past, present, and future state and support informed decision-making. Challenge 8 is a cross-cutting endeavour underpinning all other challenges and must therefore deliver resources that are relevant and useful for the widest possible range of users and stakeholders in ways adapted to their needs and capacities, leaving no one behind. This will require a continuous and iterative process, significant resources, multi-stakeholder collaborations, transparent processes, and clear focus on inclusivity and equity, to establish the digital foundations needed to support sustainable ocean management for the decades to come.
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