17 March 2025
The Institute for Marine and Coastal Research (Invemar) in Santa Marta, Colombia hosted the third UN International Ocean Data Conference (IODC), from 10 to 11 March, which was followed by the session of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Committee on International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE). As described below, three NODC representatives provided input to the IODC and represented Italy at the IODE session.
400 ocean data experts join the events to review progress in providing sound, and evidence-based knowledge to regional, national and international bodies to address pressing environmental challenges. Forty speakers provided innovative contributions on the following three sessions: 1. ocean biodiversity, 2. capacity building to facilitate data, information and knowledge sharing, 3. progress on the federated global ocean data ecosystem, 4. application of ocean data for sustainable ocean planning and management.
In the third session, NODC gave a presentation on the Blue Cloud 2026 project entitled “Blue-Cloud workbenches for Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs)”. Additionally, the Data Centre prepared a poster titled “The European data system: "How EMODnet and SeaDataNet work together".
After the IODC, the NODC delegation represented Italy at the 28th session of the UN Committee on the International Ocean Data and Information Programme (IODE). During the first day of the session, the IODE Committee awarded the Data Centre as IODE Accredited National Oceanographic Data Centre.
"We are proud of this award.” said Alessandra Giorgetti and continued "It means a lot to us because we have dedicated considerable resources to the accreditation. In particular, we hired an external ISO consultant and appointed Chiara Altobelli from NODC as the person responsible for the quality management system required by UNESCO for accreditation."
Chiara Altobelli said: "I have taken on this challenging task with the utmost enthusiasm. As a scientist and science communicator, it was difficult to think of many aspects that are not part of my background. The implementation of the quality management system and IODE guidelines, protocols and policies was important to obtain the accreditation, but most importantly it helps the data centre to continuously improve its services and daily work. I would like to thank IODE and other NODCs that were accredited before us, such as IFREMER and the Marine Institute. Their documentation and examples were fundamental for us to be accredited."
The IODE Committee noted that only a few of the NODCs in the UNESCO network are currently accredited. It strongly recommended that the remaining NODCs follow the example of the OGS and work on their accreditation.
More information is available on the OGS web site .
Find out more about the NODCs' quality management system and accreditation in this article.
