MEDIN Webinar Series 2025: Webinar 6 - Unlocking Ocean Knowledge: The Global Push for Better Data Sharing

This webinar series is hosted by the Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN), a UK initiative dedicated to improving access to high-quality marine data. MEDIN works with organisations across sectors to promote best practices in marine data management, ensuring data is discoverable, accessible, and reusable for the long term.

Throughout the year, once per month, this series will feature one-hour online sessions led by expert guest speakers, each focusing on specialised topics not typically covered in MEDIN’s regular free online workshops. These webinars are designed to support better data stewardship and highlight emerging tools, standards, and approaches in marine data.

Sessions will be recorded and made available on the MEDIN YouTube channel, creating a lasting resource for the marine data community.

Whether you are new to marine data management or have years of experience, and no matter which sector you work in, these sessions are designed to be inclusive, informative, and accessible to all who are interested in improving the way marine data is managed and shared.

Webinar 6 - Unlocking Ocean Knowledge: The Global Push for Better Data Sharing

• Boosting data sharing in the Ocean Decade - Adam Leadbetter (Decade Coordination Office for Ocean Data Sharing)

  The Decade Coordination Office for Ocean Data Sharing is the focal point for marine data and information management in the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. It is committed to fostering effective knowledge and information exchange, and aims to raise awareness about data sharing, capacity building and collaboration with Decade Actions and other entities. In this webinar we will introduce the work of the UN Ocean Decade and explore how there are overlaps between the work of MEDIN and of the Decade in building a community of practice for data sharing, developing guidelines and data standards, and encouraging good data stewardship practices. We will also discuss how these approaches scale into the digital ecosystem which is being built across the Decade and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO and feed an ecosystem of observation, creation or acquisition of data to data management to forecasting and prediction to action. This work aligns with the Decade Data and Information Strategy and supports the achievement of Ocean Decade Vision 2030 goals.

• The UN Ocean Decade's approach to reshaping the global ocean datascape - Pier Luigi Buttigieg (Alfred Wegener Institute)

  This contribution will present the essence of the Implementation Plan created to follow the UN Ocean Decade's Data and Information Strategy. In its broad and deep recommendations, this plan contains a multifaceted and concrete approach for data systems around the world to follow, in order to effectively operate within and contribute to the maturation of the ocean's digital ecosystem. Including guidance on digital architectures, organisational processes, strategies, data readiness, measures to prepare for the impacts of new technologies, and core values, the Implementation Plan will serve all ocean communities in enhancing their systems while preparing for sustained and meaningful interoperation.