Project Status - Active
Start Year: 2008
End Year: 2015
Funding Body: Sea Change under the Marine Research Sub-programme of the National Development Plan 2007–2013, Ireland

Geographic Area: European Union
Local Study Area:

Project Co-Ordinator: Jeremy Gault
CMRC Contact: Liam Caffrey (MI/CMRC)

Abstract

The primary objective of the project is to develop and implement a strategy which will integrate and enable data interrogation across all data sources used by the MI’s Fisheries Science Services (FSS) Group.

By the end of the project, the following objectives will be achieved:

• Recommendations based on review of best practice and rigorous testing, for all FSS data models and internal MI data collection/sampling methods.

• Capacity building in geospatial representation and analysis techniques for fisheries datasets.

• Identification and implementation of best practice in relation to data management for an EAFM on a level that competes with international leaders in the field such as NOAA.

• Tools to enable flexible, simultaneous interrogation of all FSS data sources for maximum data optimisation.

• Enhanced interoperability from the development of ontologies and controlled vocabularies.

• An FSS data strategy for 2010 to 2015.

Additional achievements will include:

• Improved efficiency and effectiveness from data interoperability resulting in enhanced performance across a number of MI research areas.

• National capacity building in EAFM by linking computer scientists with fisheries biologists and other domain experts (e.g. oceanographers and climatologists).

• Synergy with the Beaufort Award initiative, other relevant SeaChange research (e.g. knowledge and information management / Fisheries measures) and FP7/FP8 funded European projects.

• Direct benefits for fisheries management including rebuilding of fish stocks by improving capacity for sophisticated data interrogation.