What is ODIS and why does it matter?

What is ODIS and why does it matter?

Gijón, October 2025

ODIS —Ocean Data and Information System— is a federation of ocean data spaces developed by IOC/UNESCO to connect marine information sources from across the planet.

Its mission: to ensure that ocean data collected by governments, research centres, technology companies, and citizen organisations can interoperate with one another.

In other words, ODIS is the digital layer that makes ocean knowledge shareable, comparable, and useful for public decision-making.

Thanks to this network, a country can see its ocean in a global context: contrast its data with other regions, identify patterns, and steer national policies based on real evidence.

Universal Plastic® has been officially incorporated into the Ocean Data and Information System (ODIS), the global network led by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC-UNESCO).

This step strengthens our commitment to Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life Below Water, and places Universal Plastic within the global infrastructure that powers digital, collaborative ocean monitoring.

The alliance with ODIS allows the data collected through our app —which documents beach cleanups, waste types, geolocation, and visual evidence— to be automatically integrated into IOC-UNESCO’s federated data system.

This means every local action (a cleanup, a report, an image) becomes part of the global ocean digital intelligence.

Universal Plastic’s data becomes visible and reusable for UNESCO Member States, researchers, and intergovernmental bodies.

For governments, this opens a new pathway to:

• Measure and report progress on SDG 14, with verifiable, traceable data.
• Benchmark against other countries and coastal regions under a shared data-quality standard.
• Build evidence to access funding and marine cooperation programmes.
• Boost their blue economy by making more informed decisions on coastal tourism, sustainable fisheries, or marine waste management.

Our integration with ODIS is powered by the Plastic Monitoring Data Space —Universal Plastic’s data space designed to capture, process, and share information on marine and coastal plastic pollution.

This data space acts as an interface between governments, local communities, and ocean science.

It enables field data (from drones, buoys, volunteers, or institutions) to become structured, interoperable, and visualisable knowledge, aligned with IOC-UNESCO standards.

Joining our data space gives governments a strategic advantage within the ODIS ecosystem:

1. Smarter decision-making: Real-time access to indicators on plastic pollution, cleanup efforts, and coastal accumulation patterns.
2. Global comparability: The ability to assess environmental performance against other regions under a shared technical framework.
3. Ocean and economic resilience: Data that informs policies strengthening the Blue Economy —from fisheries management to sustainable tourism— by removing a key obstacle: plastic pollution.
4. Intergovernmental alignment: Working within the ODIS framework ensures data is valid and internationally recognised, easing cooperation across ministries and multilateral agencies.

By joining ODIS, Universal Plastic takes another step toward its vision:

Combining Technology and Science to monitor, understand, and mitigate plastic pollution.

We believe the future of ocean governance will be built on open, interoperable, and verifiable data —a common language that enables countries to cooperate beyond borders to restore ocean health.