The proposal to establish the OFDS (Ocean Forecast demonstration System) was put forward during the visit by Prof. Fredolin Tangang of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and three of his graduate students to the First Institute of Oceanography (FIO) during May 16-30, 2009. In conjunction with visit, a training course on ocean and climate modeling was organized for the students by the experts from FIO.

During the visit the Malaysian delegate also expressed interest to work on another different project on the impact of climate change on the Southeast Asia region.