Digital Ocean

• 30 Dec 2020

Why in News

Recently, the Ministry of Earth Sciences inaugurated the web-based application DigitalOcean developed by Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) in a Virtual Meeting held in New Delhi.

Key Points

• About Digital Ocean:
  
  • Digital Ocean is a new state of the art data platform for Ocean Data Management.
  • It is the first such platform to provide ocean data related services at one place.
  • It includes a set of applications developed to organize and present heterogeneous oceanographic data by adopting rapid advancements in geospatial technology.
  • It facilitates an online interactive web-based environment for data integration, 3D and 4D (3D inspace with time animation) data visualization, data analysis to assess the evolution of oceanographic features, etc.
• Significance:
  
  • Digital Ocean is a big step towards Prime Minister’s vision of Digital India that is to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.
  • It will serve as a one stop-solution for all the data related needs of a wide range of users including research institutions, operational agencies, strategic users, academic community, maritime industry, policy makers and the public.
    
    • It will also contribute to the vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat.
  • It will play a central role in sustainable management of the oceans and expanding the government’s Blue Economy initiatives.
  • It will be promoted as a platform for capacity building on Ocean Data Management for all Indian Ocean Rim countries.
• Other Related Initiative:
  
  • Deep Ocean Mission:
    
    • Launched in 2018.
    • The mission proposes to explore the deep ocean.
    • The focus of the mission is on deep-sea mining, ocean climate change advisory services, underwater vehicles and underwater robotics related technologies.
    • Two key projects planned in the Mission are:
      
      • A desalination plant powered by tidal energy.
      • A submersible vehicle that can explore depths of at least 6,000 metres.
    • Significance: It will enable India to develop capabilities to exploit resources in the Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB).

Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services

• It is an autonomous organization under the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES).
• It is located in Hyderabad & was established in 1999.
• It is a unit of the Earth System Science Organization (ESSO), New Delhi.
  
  • The ESSO operates as an executive arm of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) for its policies and programmes.
  • ESSO’s aim is to develop and improve capability to forecast weather, climate and hazard related phenomena for social, economic and environmental benefits including addressing aspects relating to climate change science, and climate services.
• It is mandated to provide the best possible ocean information and advisory services to society, industry, government agencies and the scientific community through sustained ocean observations and constant improvement through systematic and focused research.
• It has adopted and developed various state-of-the-art technologies and tools that includes Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ) advisories, Ocean State Forecast (OSF), High Wave Alerts, Tsunami early warnings, Storm Surge and Oil-Spill advisories, etc.
• It has been serving as the National Argo Data Centre and Regional Argo Data Centre of the International Argo Programme.

Source:PIB