Engaging UK Communities in Scientific Ocean Drilling: A proposal for Knowledge Exchange and Coordination for UK IODP

UK membership of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) provides unique access to cutting edge infrastructure to a growing and diversifying community of UK environmental scientists. The programme gives scientists access to samples and data from some of the most inaccessible environments on Earth. As well as scientific excellence, the impacts of UK-IODP include significant early career development opportunities, policy development, benefits to industry and public engagement. Despite the huge benefits of national membership of UK-IODP, the programme has been described as a "hidden gem", because the impact is not widely known to those beyond the immediate scientific ocean drilling community. Wider appreciation of the benefits of the UK's investments in IODP requires increased awareness and engagement with six key stakeholder communities:
1. UK-IODP Scientific Community
2. Wider UK Environmental Science Community
3. Industry Stakeholders
4. Policy makers and Government
5. Teachers, Students and Journalists
6. General Public
I will serve these communities by establishing strong communication networks, keeping them informed of opportunities and news and results. I will proactively facilitate increased collaboration between the UK-IODP community and the other stakeholder groups.
To increase awareness of the benefits and opportunities of the UK's membership of IODP among these stakeholders groups, as UK-IODP Programme Manager I will:
- Recruit Champions to act as points of contact within research institutes and learned societies and to pass on information and regular newsletters to a wider audience;
- Improve and expand UK-IODP's digital and social media presence to utilize additional platforms
- Organise conferences, workshops and meetings to engage a wider, more diverse community of scientists, and training and mentoring for researchers interested in participating in or leading drilling expeditions;
- Collaborate with professional societies to provide events tailored to specialist groups within the broader science community;
- Establish an Industry Action Group to promote UK-IODP activities and resources to Industry stakeholders, exchange knowledge, data and ideas and foster potential collaboration.
UK-IODP science provides essential data and information about issues of societal concern including climate change, geohazards, stability of ice sheets and sea level rise. I will assist scientists in engaging with policy makers by encouraging them to submit evidence to calls from parliamentary committees and the European Commission to ensure that policy makers and government are able to make informed decisions.
Teachers and journalists act as conduits for spreading knowledge and understanding. I will engage with UK science teachers to highlight UK-IODP outreach opportunities and to develop a suite of resources based on ocean drilling science, tailored to the National Curriculum at all Key Stages. I will undertake training with the UK Science Media Centre and encourage UK-IODP scientists to do so too, to improve understanding of media management and generate resources and briefings for journalists.
UK-IODP science covers topics that inspire strong public interest, yet its actvities are not widely known by the public. Increased promotion will demonstrate the value of this totally unique programme and its impact. I will engage the public via radio, press and digital media and by organising and coordinating outreach activities at national science museums, to communicate IODP's research to the public. I will work with outreach officers and managers from IODP and other scientific drilling programmes to exchange information and ideas in order to develop new outreach activities and resources.
I will build and maintain a database to record all UK-IODP participants, activity and outputs as evidence of the success of the programme and to facilitate continuous review of the needs of the stakeholder communities.

The proposed strategy and activities will increase the returns from of UK investment in IODP by increasing the overall visibility and awareness of the programme among all stakeholder groups (UK-IODP scientific community; wider UK environmental science community; industry stakeholders; policy makers and government; teachers, students and journalists; and general public) and facilitating better communication between stakeholders. This will lead to increased engagement with UK-IODP resulting in:
- Significant training opportunities and career development for Early Career Researchers and commercial scientists;
- Development of UK science leaders across a wide range of areas of scientific interest;
- Steering of IODP science themes to be in line with UK research priorities, addressing societal concerns such as climate change, sea level rise, stability of ice sheets, geohazards and carbon capture and storage (CCS);
- Excellent, globally-significant research leading to accurate data, new knowledge and understanding, and effective communication of these to parliamentary committees to support improved policy development;
- Improved relationships with Industry leading to mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge, data (e.g. release of industry data for site surveys; access to IODP archives for industry data-mining), technology and ideas between the science community and Industry;
- Enhanced national science education via design and tailoring of resources to teachers' needs, ultimately increasing engagement of students with IODP science;
- Improved public outreach via journalists, social and digital media, collaboration with science museums and dedicated outreach events. Promotion of UK-IODP news and successes will increase public awareness of the value of the programme as well as enriching their experience of science.

Improved communication between UK-IODP and NERC leadership, including regular, easily digestible updates on UK-IODP activities, will ensure that NERC leaders are better-informed of the outcomes of their investment in IODP. Construction and maintenance of a new UK-IODP database, recording all participants, activities and outputs will further aid on-going assessment of this investment, and provide the comprehensive evidence required to facilitate future review and renewal of UK-IODP.