Collaboration with Other Organizations
JCS and other organizations
JCS a single-purpose organization that bridges between many other organizations. This schematic shows the relationship between JCS and some of other organizations that have an interest in seawater (year of organization founding is also shown):
There are two types of International scientific organizations:
Intergovernmental Organizations: Usually treaty organizations set up by groups of governments in order to coordinate their interests.
Examples include the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), primarily through its consultative committees on temperature (CCT) and metrology in chemistry (CCQM), the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) and the United Nations (UN).
The UN in turn has subsidiary organizations like UNESCO, which in turn is the parent of the International Oceanographic Commission (IOC). The UN also contains the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which, along with the IOC, play a major role on organizing global observational and monitoring programs in the ocean/atmosphere system.
Non-Governmental Organizations: these are generally self-organized by scientists to advance the interests of science.
The International Science Council (ISC) is an umbrella organization for a number of ‘unions’, including the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) and the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS).
For purely specific ocean interests, the IUGG in turn coordinates the International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Ocean (IAPSO), and the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences, while the International Association of Biological Oceanography (IABO) is under the IUBS.
However, there are also other independent organizations with specific interests, like the International Association for the Properties of Water and Steam (IAPWS), which has a number of committees and subcommittees, including its Subcommittee on Seawater (SCSW). The IAPWS’s main goals are the formulation and maintenance of standards related to water in all its forms.
The disciplinary breakdown of oceanographic sciences does not always serve research purposes, and so the Scientific Committee on Ocean Research (SCOR) was an interdisciplinary body set up to facilitate and coordinate oceanographic aims.
JCS was set up below IAPSO, SCOR, and IAPWS/SCSW, reporting to all 3, in order to coordinate between these three organizations, all of which are interested in different aspects of the properties of seawater.