Since 2005, VLIZ hosts and supports the Project Office for the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE PO) Programme of UNESCO’s ‘Intergovernmental Oceano- graphic Commission’ (IOC). The ‘UNESCO/IOC Project Office for IODE’ is also the Secretariat of the IOC’s Capacity Development section.
The Project Office continues to host the OceanTeacher Global Academy (OTGA) e-learning platform and its secretariat. OTGA has transitioned from delivering onsite training to now providing mainly online training courses, both instructor-led and self-paced. In 2022 OTGA delivered 35 training courses through its global network of seventeen Regional and Specialized Training Centres. More than 1300 learners enrolled in OTGA courses in 2022 from over 100 IOC Member States. OTGA collaborated with VLIZ experts to build and deliver an online training course on Ocean Data Management and further collaboration to develop training courses is planned for 2023.
The Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS), which manages a global database containing data on the distribution, abundance, and diversity of all marine species, published 27 million new species observation records from 305 new data sets in 2022, to a total of 108 million records from 4670 data sets. This is the same amount we previously published in a decade. VLIZ manages the European OBIS node, EurOBIS, which is one of the largest of 32 regional or thematic OBIS nodes and contributes not less than 1140 (24% of total) datasets and 31.3 million records (29% of total) to OBIS. The VLIZ data centre has been actively involved in OBIS activities such as vocabulary standardization and taxonomic quality control. The VLIZ library supports OBIS in documenting the collection of OBIS-cited papers, of which a record number (191) appeared in 2022.
Regarding the activities under the IOC’s Capacity Development (CD) coordination unit hosted at the Office, the fourth Session of the IOC Group of Experts on Capacity Development (GE-CD) was held as a hybrid event on 25 November 2022. The GE-CD renewed its membership, with the continued representation of Belgium through Dr Ann-Katrien Lescrauwaet of VLIZ. The GE-CD finalized the draft IOC CD strategy (2023-2030) which will be submitted to the 32nd Session of the IOC Assembly in June 2023, including an outreach proposal to promote greater visibility and reach of its strategy. Ocean CD-Hub, an online compendium of capacity development opportunities around the world, was also developed and will be formally launched in the first quarter of 2023.
The Project Office hosts the Ocean InfoHub Project, a project funded by the Government of Flanders, that supports a global network of distributed information and data resources related to the ocean. The OIH Project facilitates discovery and interoperability of existing information systems through the lightweight Ocean Data and Information System (ODIS) architecture. The project is working with over 80 partners in total, of which 18 project partners are fully operational “nodes” in ODIS and are contributing openly discoverable content to the Ocean InfoHub knowledge graph. The VLIZ Flanders Marine Institute catalogue is one of the 18 nodes.