Vision and values

Strategic priorities 2020 – 2025

DEFINING OUR FUTURE

Our population is growing, and the quickest growth is in coastal regions.

The work we undertake at the NOC seeks to advance the knowledge required to address the big challenges facing people and planet:

• Securing and protecting ocean resources and ecosystems • Protecting people and property from natural disasters and climate change
• Understanding climate change and variability, and its effects on society

This is the context for our five year strategy, which translates these global goals into challenges and opportunities that we will embrace. Our strategy also builds on what is not changing – our enduring mission and passion to advance knowledge of the ocean.

Our vision

To gain deeper knowledge of the ocean to help every living thing on our planet flourish.

We will prioritise

• Undertaking and enabling world-class science and technology development.
• Providing world-class research facilities and access to data and samples for the benefit of UK science.
• Creating value and public benefit by supporting, with scientific evidence, the development of public policy, hazard assessment, ocean governance and regulation, and sustainable development.

Acting as OneNOC, we will exploit the synergies across these different supporting pillars of our mission to drive novel and innovative approaches to our work, enabling us to do things that are distinctive and that few others could do.

We will help every living thing flourish by

• Making sense of global environmental changes in which the ocean is deeply involved.
• Protecting people and economic infrastructure from marine-related disasters.
• Advocating for the ocean by educating and engaging humankind in understanding its role in our lives.
• Sustainably developing marine-based economies whilst protecting the ocean’s future health.

We will demonstrate

• Ambition We will always be bold. We will push for growth where it will achieve impact.
• Courage We are willing to work without fear or favour in the thick of contentious societal issues
• Confidence We see the opportunities and figure out how to lead the way there.
• Intelligence and innovation We take calculated yet well-informed actions, based on solid foundations. We challenge the depths of discovery, pushing boundaries and adapting quickly.
• Inclusion We will break free of stereotypical ideas of what and who can advance science and technology, pushing for more diversity, drawing to NOC partners and all who share our ambition.
• Independence With our freedom and financial independence, which we must create for ourselves, we will have our own voice and invest in what we believe in.
• Collaboration Bringing together all our elements into OneNOC gives us the capability to meet our ambitions and be successful.

We will seek to invest over the next five years to

1. Advance the science needed to deliver the ocean we want for the future, enabling us to explore the critical environmental challenges of climate change, pollution, biodiversity and habitat loss and their impact on society.
2. Ensure that we are fit for the future, delivering digitally enabled science and engineering in a reduced carbon, built environment, enhanced for the collaboration of diverse groups of people.
3. Transform our world-class facilities for the NERC Marine Observing and Research Community.