(Science|Business) Ocean data must be shared and reused, not filed away, say experts

For the original publication, please click here.

Too much ocean research data is inaccessible and fragmented, whereas it could be shared and reused to better protect the environment and boost the economy. This was one of the messages to emerge from the World Ocean Summit, a high-level meeting of policymakers and scientists that took place in Montréal on March 4-5.

“There is enough data to help us if this data could be reused,” said Mona Nemer, Canada’s chief science advisor. “But in most cases, data is generated for the purpose it was set up for [whereas] its value is really in the reuse, in the interoperability, in putting together the data about ocean acidification, about transportation rules, about biodiversity, etc.”

This data could be especially useful in supporting the so-called blue economy, industries that exploit marine and coastal environments. Without good data, it is impossible to tell if these industries are working sustainably, or undermining their own futures by wrecking the environment. 

The signs at present are not good. “We don’t believe that the progression that we’ve seen so far in most ocean industries will continue [. . .] because of all many pressures that were identified by scientists in terms of overexploitation, in terms of environmental externalities,” said Claire Jolly, who heads the OECD’s Ocean Economy Programme.

While more data about the oceans is collected now than ever before, it is simply not joined up. According to Vanessa Scott, director of industry relations and innovation for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, ocean data is usually spread across repositories and websites which are “not really collated together.” Instead, it is curated and tailored to address specific research questions.

“[We could] talk to industry to find out what questions they want to answer, and then put the data together in ways that create actionable decision-support tools to meet their needs,” she said. “That will help build the value [of data], and hopefully some new funding opportunities.”

Accessing industry data

Industry itself represents a significant source of ocean data, much of it collected in the course of offshore energy and shipping operations. But that data will remain inaccessible, unless companies have incentives to feed it into public data repositories.

“In the private sector, data is currency, data is your value,” said Emily Charry Tissier, chief executive of Whale Seeker, a Canadian start-up using AI for marine mammal monitoring. “And so, the more data you have, the more worth you have as a company, and ocean data is particularly expensive and high-worth.”

She suggested engaging with more private players, starting with insurance companies. Better, higher resolution ocean measurements can not only help them improve risk quantification and prediction, but also provide them with a stronger return on investment. 

“It really is a win-win, because as we build out ocean data collaboratively, it will have multiple benefits to biodiversity, to climate, to the blue economy, and then to all of the economy,” she said.

Besides, “not all data is commercially sensitive,” said Kendra MacDonald, chief executive officer of Canada’s Ocean Supercluster, an industry-led group designed to accelerate the commercialisation of ocean solutions. “You can get more value from your data by actually matching it with other datasets.”

A failure to share data increases the chance of duplication, she added. “There are certain parts of the ocean that we have probably observed 100 times over, and then there are other parts of the ocean that we have much less data on.”

This can impede decision-making, as she saw during a meeting of the Canadian parliament that set out to discuss the effectiveness of marine protected areas. “You’ve got different groups with different objectives collecting different sets of data to support their position, but there’s not a lot of transparency around that,” she said. “That breaches trust which slows, again, everything down.”

Collaborative governance

While Canada has a comprehensive framework for open science and open data, this is not enough, according to Nemer. Governments and funding agencies “also have to provide the tools, the financial assistance, the expertise for the researchers to be able to make their data properly curated, open [and] uploaded to specific datasets and spaces.”

Ultimately, scientists, regulators and industry can “agree on formats that are interoperable, interusable, and also on a governance structure that will allow certain privately held data to be accessible,” she added.

MacDonald however pointed to “differences in culture” between the three parties. “The definition of success when it comes to speed and timeline can be very different,” she said. “The definition of risk can be very different, and so it gets lost in translation in terms of what the different teams need to achieve.” 

The same goes for objectives. Canada’s Ocean Supercluster funds projects conducted by industrial actors, which choose their research partners. “Once you get down to [. . .] who is paying for what, how intellectual property is going to be shared, and which datasets are going to be public and private, that’s where it starts to break down,” she added.

For Scott, universities can help link them up. “Universities are great at being the connectors and the catalysts for driving innovation and applying research technologies and solutions to help get out of the lab and into the market,” she said. 

On one hand, she gets to help the researchers who have developed data-collecting floats and other ocean solutions explore commercialisation opportunities, and on the other, Scripps programmes such as the StartBlue Ocean Enterprise Accelerator support start-ups eager to access university resources.

The panellists finally discussed the rising use of AI, which has been proving useful in processing massive, complex datasets, be it to map the seafloor, track illegal fishing or monitor coral health. But its use of both real-world and synthetic, generated data has moved the debate on data collection from a compliance-driven concern to ethical considerations.

“Maybe we should not reinvent the wheel for the sake of reinventing the wheel. We have a list of essential ocean variables for which there are incredible gaps all over the world, but we do have a list,” Jolly said. “That means that [by] working with academic researchers, industry players, we can expect to collect much more data [and] build a time series.”

She also expressed some optimism about the political push to strengthen ocean observation, led most recently by the European Commission, which hopes to improve the interoperability of existing systems under its upcoming Ocean Act. It has also launched a specific consultation on the governance and architecture of ocean observation.