Toward ocean practices sustainability - an evolution of the Ocean Practices Maturity Model

Global challenges such as climate change, ecosystem sustainability, and marine food resources require widely adopted practices for observation, data management, and application that produce the consistent, interoperable information needed for informed decision-making. Identifying mature, sustained practices helps build the broad acceptance needed for widespread adoption. This paper reviews the original Ocean Practices Maturity Model (OPMM) and presents an updated version, OPMM2, developed through co-design with the ocean research and applications community. OPMM2 offers clearer metrics for maturity levels across a wide range of ocean activities, along with a standardized set of definitions for both Level Attributes and the associated vocabulary. The result is clear guidance for advancing a practice from Documented to Adopted to Sustained. OPMM2 was co-designed and evaluated through personal interviews with authors representing a wide range of ocean practices. These practices spanned physical oceanography, biogeochemistry, and biology/ecosystem disciplines, as well as platforms, sensors, data management, and fisheries. As a result, OPMM2 is being adopted as the maturity framework for inclusion and discovery by methodology repositories. Additional impact is emerging as authors revise their practice documents to include opportunities for further maturity advancement in areas such as user feedback and training.