Context: The ocean is a storehouse of infinite knowledge and ‘Digital Ocean’ helps to share this knowledge about the ocean with a wide range of users including research institutions, operational agencies, strategic users, academic community, maritime industry and policy makers.
About Digital ocean

• Digital Ocean platform is a first of its kind platform for ocean data management. 
• It is developed by INCOIS of Ministry of Earth sciences.
• 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.
• Also data fusion and multi-format download of disparate data from multiple sources viz., in-situ, remote sensing and model data, will be available.

Significance

• Digital Ocean is a first of its kind digital platform for Ocean Data Management. 
• Digital Ocean will serve as a one stop-solution for all the data related needs of a wide range of users.
• Digital Ocean is a big step towards the vision of Digital India i.e. to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy”.
• The ocean is a storehouse of infinite knowledge and ‘Digital Ocean’ helps to share this knowledge about the ocean with a wide range of users including research institutions, operational agencies, strategic users, academic community, maritime industry and policy makers.
• It will play a central role in sustainable management of our oceans and expanding our ‘Blue Economy’ initiatives.
• The Digital Ocean will be promoted as a platform for capacity building on Ocean Data Management for all Indian Ocean Rim countries.

Other similar initiatives
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).

About INCOIS 

• Indian National Center for Ocean Information Services is an autonomous organization of the Government of India, under the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
• It provides ocean information and advisory services to various stakeholders in the country, including Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ) advisories, Ocean State Forecast (OSF), high wave alerts, tsunami early warnings, storm surge and oil-spill advisories.
• It uses state-of-the-art technologies and tools to get real time information on oceanographic and marine meteorological data. 
• The institute has been serving as the National Argo Data Centre and Regional Argo Data Centre of the International Argo Programme.