The ECORD (European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling), represents scientific institutions in 17 nations, and has formed the ECORD Science Operator (ESO) organization to undertake Mission-Specific Platform (MSP) operations for IODP. The ESO consists of:
The British Geological Survey (BGS): acts as consortium coordinator and is responsible for overall ESO management under a contract from the ECORD Managing Agency (EMA) as designated by the ECORD Council
The University of Bremen: contracted by BGS to oversee curation duties and core repository facilities as well as data management tasks. GeoForschungsZentrum (GFZ) Potsdam supports the ESO by contributing the Drilling Information System (DIS) for offshore data acquisition.
The European Petrophysics Consortium: contracted by BGS to carry out all logging and petrophysical activities. This consortium is comprised of the University of Leicester, U.K. (coordinator), the University of Montpellier, France, the Rheinisch-Westfälischen Hochschule (RWTH), Aachen, Germany, and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.