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SOCIB, the Balearic Islands Coastal Ocean Observing and Forecasting System (http://www.socib.es), is a Marine Research Infrastructure, a multiplatform distributed and integrated system, a facility of facilities that extends from the nearshore to the open sea and provides free, open and quality control data. SOCIB is a facility o facilities and has three major infrastructure components: (1) a distributed multiplatform observing system, (2) a numerical forecasting system, and (3) a data management and visualization system. We present the spatial data infrastructure and applications developed at SOCIB. One of the major goals of the SOCIB Data Centre is to provide users with a system to locate and download the data of interest (near real-time and delayed mode) and to visualize and manage the information. Following SOCIB principles, data need to be (1) discoverable and accessible, (2) freely available, and (3) interoperable and standardized. In consequence, SOCIB Data Centre Facility is implementing a general data management system to guarantee international standards, quality assurance and interoperability. The combination of different sources and types of information requires appropriate methods to ingest, catalogue, display, and distribute this information. SOCIB Data Centre is responsible for directing the different stages of data management, ranging from data acquisition to its distribution and visualization through web applications. The system implemented relies on open source solutions. In other words, the data life cycle relies in the following stages: • Acquisition: The data managed by SOCIB mostly come from its own observation platforms, numerical models or information generated from the activities in the SIAS Division. • Processing: Applications developed at SOCIB to deal with all collected platform data performing data calibration, derivation, quality control and standardization. • Archival: Storage in netCDF and spatial databases. • Distribution: Data web se

New monitoring technologies are being progressively implemented in open-ocean and coastal observatories. The Mediterranean Sea is a well-known, reduced-scale ocean, an ideal natural laboratory to study global ocean processes, in particular those associated with meso- and submesoscale variability, interactions with mean flows and associated ecosystem response. SOCIB, the Balearic Islands Coastal Ocean Observing and Forecasting System, is one of such observatories, a multiplatform distributed and integrated system, a facility of facilities that extends from the nearshore to the open sea. SOCIB profits from the strategic position of the Balearic Islands at the Atlantic/Mediterranean transition area, one of the “hot spots” of biodiversity in the world’s oceans, and also of societal needs in islands where preservation of the environment is essential to assure both residents’ welfare and the competitiveness of the tourist sector. SOCIB is unique in that, from peer-reviewed excellence, its mission and objectives are science-, technology-, and society-driven. These types of new marine infrastructures, because of their critical mass and sustained funding, are presently establishing new ways of international cooperation, leading to major science breakthroughs, innovations in oceanographic instrumentation, and new ways of more efficient and science-based coastal and ocean management. We describe the major elements and structure of SOCIB and present some recent scientific, technological, and society-related results that are of relevance at a global ocean scale.