DEVISING EARLY-CAREER CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT IN THE INDIAN OCEAN REGION (DECCaD-IO)
Photo credit: Mayur Arvind / Unsplash
Vision and mission
“Devising Early-Career Capacity Development in the Indian Ocean region” (DECCaD-IO) was established as part of the Early Career Scientists’ Network (ECSN) during the second International Indian Ocean Expedition (IIOE-2) in 2023.
The food security of millions of coastal populations spanning East Africa, West and East India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar depends on coastal and artisanal fisheries in the Indian Ocean region. In a pattern seen elsewhere too, climate change disproportionately affects vulnerable communities in the global south, and the impacts are exacerbated by a disparity in available resources. This disparity extends to the scientists as well from the Indian Ocean Rim countries, who face limited access to big data geoscience resources and cloud-based computing platforms- crucial areas of advancement in earth sciences and ocean climate change research in an era of high-data-volume Earth observations.
Training on and access to these new cloud-based approaches have been overwhelming in the high income countries, leaving the next generation of ocean and marine scientists in the middle-to-low income countries in danger of falling behind, precisely at a time when big data geoscience is needed to help these countries adapt to ocean climate change.
The overall objective of DECCaD-IO is to provide early careers an opportunity to cultivate their capacity as a trainer of training courses for young professionals as a team member among the senior professionals, predominantly in the Indian Ocean-rim (IOR) countries to increase capacity development across various marine science topics.
Photo: Glimpses of the ITCOocean training, Jan-Feb 2024
Goals and objectives
DECCaD-IO plans to conduct two trainings every year for the coming five years (2023-27), thus facilitating ten major capacity building events to represent the ocean decade. The trainings that cover various marine science topics, will be designed in a strategic manner to cater EC requirements in the IO-region. The most significant feature of this initiative is that the ECs are not only students but also serve as the faculties (along with senior tutors), and more so in the later years. This is deliberated to nurture their metamorphosis from a learner to a teacher.
Past trainings
Organized by International Training Centre for Operational Oceanography (ITCOocean), ESSO-INCOIS, Hyderabad, India.
In depth understanding of machine learning for species (macrofauna) distribution modelling (SDM) is needed by many young ecosystem researchers. SDMs are an important class of models used to understand species association with the environment. SDMs are widely used to understand how species distributions are changing with ocean climate change and are also used to estimate abundance over large ocean regions from fisheries survey data. This course is devised to familiarize the young professionals in the Indian Ocean-rim (IOR) countries with the latest developments in this field. Learn more.
Organized by International Training Centre for Operational Oceanography (ITCOocean) ESSO-INCOIS, Hyderabad, India in collaboration with Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation programme (MEA, GoI).
Understanding of fishery oceanography is needed by many young researchers. This course is devised, to familiarize the young professionals with the latest developments in this field. The UN have proclaimed 2021-30 as decade of ocean science for sustainable development and one of the important challenges identified under it is to feed global populations sustainably while ensuring health of the marine ecosystems.
IMPORTANT:
- This “in-person” training is exclusive for foreign (non-Indian) participants.
- This training is identified/eligible under ‘Sagar Amrut Scholarship’.
Organized by International Training Centre for Operational Oceanography (ITCOocean) ESSO-INCOIS, Hyderabad, India in collaboration with CEMACS (Malaysia), SUST (Bangladesh), SQU (Oman) and Andhra Uni., Visakhapatnam.
This course was organized to develop capacity of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) from the Indian Ocean and the IO Rim countries incl. GOOS Members, POGO members, etc to making use of ocean observations for coastal applications. The training is envisaged to contribute to the proposed outcomes of Ocean Decade on “A Predicted Ocean” and “A safe Ocean”. More information.
Resources
Read the IIOE-2 ECSN led ‘DECCaD-IO’ Training Report in The Indian Ocean-Bubble publication by INCOIS
