Recently, UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (UNESCO-IOC) announced that two projects, “Disaster Observation & Mitigation in Coastal Oceans” (DOMiNO) and “Facing and Addressing Ocean Hazards Together” (FACT), proposed and led by Ocean University of China (OUC), have been endorsed under the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (the Ocean Decade). The endorsements reflect broad recognition of OUC’s research capabilities and international influence in ocean hazard risk governance and coastal hazard monitoring and response, and mark an important step forward in the university’s participation in international cooperation on global ocean governance.
The DOMiNO project is led by Professor Wu Xiao of the College of Marine Geo-sciences. Building on the “Mitigation of Natural Incidence Towards increased Oceanic Resilience” (MoNITOR) Programme, the project is jointly implemented with Louisiana State University in the United States, a research center of the Helmholtz Association in Germany, Utrecht University in the Netherlands, the University of Tokyo in Japan, Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, and other internationally renowned institutions. The project addresses the growing risks of coastal hazards under the combined pressures of climate change and human activities. It aims to develop a comprehensive technological system integrating real-time monitoring, precise simulation, reliable forecasting, and science-based decision-making. By developing and integrating new ocean monitoring technologies, the project will enhance the dynamic observation of coastal hazard processes. Through advanced numerical simulation and artificial intelligence, it will improve the accuracy and timeliness of hazard forecasts. It will also translate research findings into practical response strategies to support disaster prevention and mitigation in coastal areas. Committed to open cooperation and mutual benefit, the project team will work with international partners to address fragmented coastal hazard data, insufficient forecasting accuracy, and limited response capacity. In doing so, it aims to help coastal countries and regions to strengthen their resilience to natural hazards and contribute to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The FACT project is led by Professor Bao Rui of the Key Laboratory of Marine Chemistry Theory and Technology, Ministry of Education. It brings together China’s Ministry of Emergency Management, the University of Innsbruck in Austria, the Geological Survey of Japan, the University of Bremen in Germany, the China Council of the U.S. Climate Organization, and other institutions in China and abroad to build an interdisciplinary and transnational collaboration network. Focusing on major ocean hazards, including tsunamis, earthquakes, submarine landslides, typhoons, algal blooms, submarine geohazards, and the dispersal of radioactive contamination in the ocean, the project aims to help countries strengthen their overall capacity to respond to ocean hazards. Through the mechanisms for international collaboration and joint scientific expeditions established under FACT, the OUC team will expand its research on disaster processes, material transport, and environmental responses in extreme marine environments, advancing ocean hazard research from “process understanding” toward “in situ sensing, intelligent analysis, forecasting, and early warning.”
