Every day, research vessels collect continuous data underway, improving our understanding of the state of the ocean. Most importantly, they reveal how the marine environment is changing. These underway data streams together with stationary data are fundamental to global ocean observations. They support applications of societal significance that influence our everyday life, most prominently weather forecasts. However, workflows and digital infrastructures remain mostly standalone solutions scattered across institutions and countries. Unifying the work is essential, however there is often a lack of attention for addressing the issue in detail. Often the focus spreads across broader topics (sessions) where its unique challenges and solutions often remain unseen.

Standardization of data workflows can help to optimize data output of research cruises around the world. The German Marine Research Alliance (DAM) brought together a consortium of data experts from several German research institutions, universities and federal agencies. Since 2019, DAM has been developing an integrated framework to enhance the acquisition, transportation, processing and publication of data and metadata from German research vessels, particularly from permanently installed systems, to enable subsequent reuse. The extension and connection of research data infrastructures and existing modular workflows is used by a team of data stewards to combine sensor streams, automated quality‑control routines aiming for standardized data products and open data services. Early results show clear gains in consistency, reproducibility and accessibility leading to higher visibility and accelerated usage of acquired data from German research vessels. This session brings these stories together.

By gathering other national and international initiatives in one place, this session aims to build a shared space for a global community. Since similar efforts are emerging in Europe and worldwide this session shall support meaningful exchange and future global collaboration. We welcome submissions that share the overall vision of disseminating data globally. We invite contributions that advance shipboard data workflows, real‑time and delayed‑mode automation, interoperable observing infrastructures and FAIR data practices. We welcome innovative quality‑control methods, scalable data pipelines, and end‑to‑end sensor‑to‑archive solutions that strengthen transparency and cross‑platform compatibility.