WOC and EU-POLARNET Launch Global Survey to Advance Industry/Science Collaboration on Polar Data Collection

The World Ocean Council (WOC) and EU-PolarNet are reaching out to the global polar and ocean business community to identify opportunities to collaborate on data collection in support of improved science and sustainable development.

To advance this collaboration, the polar and ocean business community from all over the world is invited to participate in the WOC/EU PolarNet SURVEY on vessels in polar regions. If you are part of the polar and ocean business community which includes shipping but also fishing, tourism, extractive industries (minerals, oil & gas) and other activities, whether or not you are in the EU, your input to this survey will be precious. We also invite you to spread the word if you know companies and industries in the Polar regions!

EU-PolarNet is the world’s largest consortium of expertise and infrastructure for polar research, representing 22 research institutions from 17 European countries, supported by Horizon 2020. The WOC is the EU-PolarNet industry partner, working to foster and facilitate private sector interaction with the polar research community.

Expanding the scope and scale of polar ocean and atmosphere observations is essential to improved understanding, modelling, and predicting of conditions in these areas. This will in turn reduce risks to industries operating in polar areas.

There are important opportunities for science and industry to collaborate in the use of ‘ships of opportunity’ to facilitate data collection and achieve the mutual benefits of increased and improved information from polar areas.

The present survey builds on the discussions on “Polar Region Sustainable Development: Business and Science Collaboration in the Arctic and Antarctic” at the recent WOC Sustainable Ocean Summit (SOS). The survey also contributes to the WOC Smart Ocean-Smart Industries program, which is working to systematically scale up industry involvement in data collection worldwide.