JPI Oceans aims to address broad priority thematic areas which lie at the intersections of the marine environment, climate change and human activities. In order to understand these interactions, capacities in terms of human resources and infrastructures are required. Because of the very nature of the marine system and climate interaction, there is a need for sustained long-time series as well as integrated observations bringing together physical, chemical, and biological data of the different parts of the seas and oceans. Added to this is the need for geological data to understand hazards and risk, in addition to measurements of sediments for instance in river basins, to measure natural historical vs. human induced climate change. All these infrastructures for ocean observation (permanent, temporary and exploratory) and experimentation/testing are expensive to build, upgrade, maintain and to operate and will benefit from the European planning approach offered by the JPI Oceans mechanism. In order to identify where JPI Oceans can add value in the field of infrastructures and human capacity building, this work package first conducted a mapping of existing infrastructures, observation/data and human capacity building based on a broad stakeholders consultation. The mapping exercise and the stakeholders’ consultation demonstrated that Europe benefits from a wide variety of MRI, existing, in continuous development or in construction, with a total of more than 900 facilities. A preliminary analysis allowed to highlight a number of key issues related to each types of marine research infrastructure2. Regarding Human Capacity Building (HCB), CSA Oceans has built on previous initiatives, in particular the achievements of the SEAS-ERA project to map the European landscape and instruments to support education, training, and mobility3. This mapping exercise has been completed by the analysis of a case study specifically addressing the ‘jobs of the sea’ issue, targeting technology districts dealing mainly with maritime transport activities. Based on the mapping and an in-depth analysis of the stakeholders consultation, the present report proposes needs and gaps that need to be covered for a sustained observation and collection of marine data and develop a long-term European observation system (Chapter 3.), existing gaps in infrastructures for laboratory research and experimentation in different marine and maritime fields (Chapter 4.), general marine research infrastructures gaps (Chapter 5.), as well as gaps and needs in human capacity building (Chapter 6.). These numerous gaps and needs call for an improved joint programming and coordination of marine RIs and HCB in Europe in terms of management and governing mechanisms. The structure of this report is based on the document “state of play - analysis of stakeholders’ consultation” presented to the JPI Oceans Strategic Advisory Board (StAB) and Management Board (MB) at the Oslo meeting (26-27 march 2014). In this structure, each sub-chapter corresponds to a category of needs identified by stakeholders (see also 2.2 analysis of the stakeholders’ consultation). Relevant gaps for JPI Oceans joint activities are listed for each of these issues. As a next step, Work Package 1 of the CSA Oceans project will integrate output of this gap analyses into a coherent Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) and recommend joint actions based on an assessment of the suggested proposals.