Data e-Infrastructure Initiative for Fisheries Management and Conservation of Marine Living Resources iMarine

1.8Individual participants

GEIE ERCIM (ERCIM), France (Coordinator)

The European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM, www.ercim.eu) is a European Economic Interest Grouping (EEIG), comprised of a network of research institutes from twenty European countries, embodying more than 12,000 researchers and engineers. ERCIM is based in Sophia Antipolis (France) with an antenna in Brussels.

ERCIM’s mission is to: foster collaborative work within the European research community in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Applied Mathematics; advise the European Commission and national governments; and increase co-operation with European industry. ERCIM is also the European host of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), whose mission is to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.

Role in iMarine

ERCIM will lead NA1 and provide the financial and administrative coordination of the project.

Expected outcome from iMarine

Through iMarine, ERCIM is fully in line with its mission of “Cooperating for Excellence in Research”. ERCIM has successfully collaborated with CNR-ISTI, core member of the EEIG, over three EC Framework Programmes in order to provide the administrative and financial support required by the Project Director and her team of researchers at ISTI in Pisa, assisting them to achieve their own research objectives with focus and efficiency.

Key personnel

Jessica Michel will serve as the project Financial and Administrative Director, i.e., Coordinator. Joining ERCIM in 2004, her project management experience includes most notably the coordination of the e-Infrastructure I3s D4Science and D4Science-II; the Beyond-The-Horizon, InterLink and FET11 Coordination Actions funded by the Future and Emerging Technologies Unit; and several projects managed in cooperation with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Jessica also serves as an external consultant to the World Wide Web Foundation for project management expertise. Jessica earned an undergraduate degree in French Literature at Bowdoin College (USA) followed by a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from Solvay Business School of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium in 2001. Both degrees were earned with High Honours.

Philippe Rohou will provide back-up support to the PROPOSAL Project Coordinator. Manager of the ERCIM Project Team since 2008, Philippe’s European project management experience includes the administrative and financial coordination of the DELOS NoE (60 partners), CoreGRID NoE (42 partners), RACE-network RFID thematic network (60 partners), Digital World Forum CSA (with W3C), and Net-WMS STREP, as well as dissemination work package leadership for the VPH NoE. Mr. Rohou obtained his MSc in Mathematics and Statistics at Paris University and later spent 14 years with Digital Equipment Corporation managing projects, programmes, consulting groups and the company's European customer briefing centre. The next 5 years led him to manage a small events company, culminating with the creation of his own enterprise in 2004 offering corporate events and golf circuits on the French Riviera.

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Italy

The Institute of Information Science and Technologies (CNR-ISTI) is located in Pisa, Italy, and its main mission is to producing scientific excellence and playing an active role in technology transfer. Part of the largest research institution in Italy (the National Research Council, or CNR), CNR-ISTI is organised in 16 technology centers or labs, each of them pursuing a well-defined set of scientific objectives. State-of-the-art technology development and training are other activities performed by the centers.

The team participating in this project belongs to the ‘Multimedia Networked Information System Laboratory’, which consists of 60 researchers and technicians conducting research and development of (i) technologies for the management, distribution and fruition of multimedia information, i.e., information represented not only in textual form but also in other forms, like images, audio/video, etc.. and (ii) new software architectures and system services supporting large distributed multimedia information systems and data infrastructures. This team has a long experience in participating to many EU-funded projects relevant to the topics addressed in the iMarine project. In particular, The team also coordinated from the scientific point of view the stream of projects DILIGENT-D4Science-D4Science-II that has been played a central role in the definition and implementation of Virtual Research Environments on Service Oriented e-Infrastructures. Other projects the team has taken part in 7th FP are: EFG, HOPE, DRIVER-II, EuropeanaV1, SAPIR, ASSETS, HOPE, VENUS-C, DL.org and GRDI2020.

Role in iMarine

In the context of the project, the CNR-ISTI team will provide scientific coordination and will act as leader in the following WPs: NA2, SA2, JRA1, and JRA2.

Expected outcome from iMarine

On a large scale, CNR-ISTI’s expectations from iMarine are to apply the wide experience on data infrastructure gained in the past projects to new domains and to set the bar high for the service-oriented software systems’ and for the data services areas by tackling the new challenges posed by the project. On specific areas, major goals are to extend the current gCube platform core technology with new facilities and tools, make the technology even more interoperable with other platforms, foster the adoption of new standards in gCube and gain new expertise on Data curation, Data harmonization and Data mining for socio-economic related data.

Key personnel

Dr. Donatella Castelli is a senior researcher at CNR-ISTI. She started working in the Digital Library Area in 1996. Since then she has been involved in many EU funded projects related to Digital Libraries and Data e-Infrastructures. Currently,  she acts as the Scientific Director of the D4Science-II project and she is member of the Programme Scientific Board of the OpenAIRE and GRDI projects. Her research interests include data infrastructure content modelling and interoperability.

Dr. Leonardo Candela is a researcher at CNR-ISTI. He has a relevant expertise in the area of Digital Library and Data Infrastructures. He currently covers the role of Virtual Research Environment Manager in the D4Science-II project. He is also leading the effort for the production of the “Digital Library Interoperability Technology and Methodology Cookbook”. He has been member of the DELOS Reference Model Technical Committee and of the OAI-ORE Liaison Group. His research interests include Digital Library Management Systems and Architectures, Digital Libraries Models, Distributed Information Retrieval, and Grid Computing.

Dr. Pasquale Pagano is a senior researcher at CNR-ISTI. He has a strong background on digital library distributed architectures.  He has participated in the design of the most relevant DL systems developed by CNR.  He is currently the Technical Director of the D4Science-II project and member of the Project Management Board of the VENUS-C projects. His research interests include distributed data infrastructure enabling systems and heterogeneous content management.

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), Greece

The National and Kapodestrian University of Athens (http://www.uoa.gr) is one of the major higher degree public educational institutions in Greece, and the oldest university in the Balkans and the wider East Mediterranean Basin. The Department of Informatics and Telecommunications (http://www.di.uoa.gr/) belongs to the Faculty of Applied Sciences. Department staff consists of ~45 academic staff members and over 100 PhD candidates and research associates. The faculty, research staff and students participate in a large number of projects of national and international scale. The Management of Data & Information Knowledge Group (MaDgIK) has a rich and long experience in several topics of Computer Science such as Software Engineering, Databases and Knowledge Bases; Experiment Management Systems; Workflow Management Systems; Digital Libraries; User Interfaces; Personalization and Usage Statistics; Data Warehouses; Data Mining; and Distributed Systems and has participated in several relevant research and development projects. Those funded during the last 6 years include the DIAS (eContent), DILIGENT IP, DELOS NoE, BRICKS IP, DRIVER, HEALTH-E-CHILD (IST FP6), KATOPTRON (Greek initiative), DRIVER-II, TELPlus, D4SCIENCE, D4SCIENCE-II, PAPYRUS, OpenAIRE, BELIEF, BELIEFII, DL.org, GRDI2020 (FP7).

Role in iMarine

NKUA will participate in the following WPs: NA2, NA3, NA4, SA1, SA2, SA3, JRA1, JRA2, JRA3, JRA4

Expected outcome from iMarine

Through iMarine, NKUA will strengthen its research position in e-science infrastructures and in particular the areas of Systems Engineering, (Distributed) Data and Information Management and Retrieval, Data Mining, Cloud Computing, Workflow Management Systems and Optimisation. Additionally it will strengthen its educational and training ability in applied systems and will pursue awareness of its capacity in the respective areas, through scientific dissemination and training.

Key personnel

Prof Yannis Ioannidis ([e-mail]) is a Professor at the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications of NKUA. He holds Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley (1996), where he was appointed professor in 1999. His research interests include database and information systems, digital libraries, optimisation and human-computer interaction. He has published over 60 articles in leading journals and conferences and holds 2 patents. Dr. Ioannidis was elected as the ACM SIGMOD chair, is an ACM and IEEE Fellow, and was the recipient of the Presidential Young Investigator (PYI) award in 1991. He is an Associate Editor of five journals (IS, VLDB Journal, J. of Digital Libraries, J. of Int. Information Systems, electronic ACM Digital Symposium Collection) and has been a member of the program committees of over 60 conferences, four times as (co-)chair (VLDB, ICDE, EDBT, HDMS, SSDBM, and VDB). He has served on the review or scientific boards of the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories in Berkeley, and the (now defunct) CESDIS Center for Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences. Between 2002 and 2004 he served as the IT advisor to the Minister of Health of Greece. He has been a co principal investigator in over 25 research projects.

Prof Alex Delis ([e-mail]) is a Professor at the Dept. of Informatics & Telecommunications of NKUA. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Univ. of Maryland at College Park. He has taught at New York University-Polytechnic Institute, Queensland Univ. of Technology, Univ. of Patras, Catholic Univ. of Cordoba, and Univ. of Maryland. His research interests are in distributed systems and he has published in more than 80 journal and conference articles. His work has been supported among others by the US National Science Foundation, the Australian Research Council, the European Commission and the Greek Ministry of Education. He has served as PC member and organizer in more than 80 international conferences and has performed several seminars. Among the awards he received are the Best Paper Award in the 14th IEEE Int. Conf. on Distributed Computing Systems, the NSF CAREER Award and the Maurice V. Wilkes Medal for best paper in The Computer Journal. He has also been a Fulbright Fellow.

George Kakaletris ([e-mail]) is Senior Software Engineer, holding a degree in Physics and an MSc on Informatics, both obtained by NKUA. His professional experience spans several years of employment by Greek IT companies both in S/W Engineering and R&D Department directorship/management positions. He has been a task / work package / project leader in several research and development projects. He has served as an ICT consultant for the Greek Parliament and several other public authorities. Currently is NKUA permanent staff, under the role of ICT consultant by the NKUA vice-rector of Finances and Development.

European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), Switzerland

CERN is the largest particle physics laboratory in the world and is an international organisation with its headquarters in Switzerland. It is one of Europe’s first joint ventures (1954) for fundamental research and technology developments. CERN operates the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG), a global collaboration of more than 140 computing centres in 34 countries, the 4 Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments, and several national and international grid projects. The WLCG mission is to build and maintain a data storage and analysis infrastructure for the entire high energy physics (HEP) community that will use the LHC.

Role in iMarine

In iMarine, CERN will contribute with its extensive expertise in managing large scale distribute infrastructures to coordinate the SA1 work package and in particular: operate the iMarine data e-Infrastructure (TSA1.1) and deploy infrastructure monitoring and accounting tools based on messaging architectures (TSA1.3). From the software development perceptive CERN will contribute to the enhancement and development of secure, reliable, and efficient facilities for data transfer between remote nodes of the iMarine data e-Infrastructure (TJRA2.2 and TJRA4.2).

Expected Outcome from iMarine

Being involved in the development and deployment of messaging-based tools for infrastructure monitoring and accounting and the enhancement and development of data transfer facilities, CERN and iMarine will profit from the improvements delivered by the new data transfer and monitoring and accounting services and tools. These improved services and tools will deliver improved functionality and address new requirements and use cases. From the infrastructure operation perspective the work on e-Infrastructures operation will promote a closer collaboration between different e-Infrastructures (iMarine, EGI, others) and make possible the interoperability and resource sharing between these e-Infrastructures under a common “ecosystem”.

Key personnel

Dr. Markus Schulz is currently leading the Grid Technology team at CERN. From 2001 on he contributed for CERN in various roles to the build up of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid, gaining experience in all aspects of grid computing from middleware development to operations. During this time he participated in several EU funded projects.

Before getting involved in Grid Computing Dr. Schulz contributed to the hardware and software of several DAQ and real time systems for High Energy Physics and Heavy Ion experiments. This work covered a wide range of distributed computing technology, high speed / low latency networks and custom build hardware. These activities allowed him to spend several years at different laboratories and universities (DESY, CERN, BNL, Kirchhoff Institute for Physics).

Dr. Schulz have been trained as a Physicist. In 1993 he received a Ph.D. from the University Hamburg for work in the field of experimental High Energy Physics.

Pedro Andrade graduated at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto where he obtained his MSc degree on Informatics and Computing Engineering in 2003. From 2003 to 2004 he worked at the same faculty for a research project related to Grid and Public computing systems especially tailored for the High Energy Physics domain. From 2004 he has been working at CERN European Organisation for Nuclear Research in the IT department with Grid computing and scientific data e-Infrastructure systems. He participated in several EU-funded projects (DILIGENT, D4Science, D4Science-II, EMI) related to distributed infrastructures and is now leading the Infrastructure Operation activity of the D4Science-II project. His research interests include, among others, distributed data e-Infrastructures, Grid computing systems, infrastructures deployment and policies.

Engineering Ingegneria Informatica SpA (E-IIS), Italy

Engineering Group is Italy’s largest systems integration group and a leader in the provision of complete IT services and consultancy. Engineering Group has about 6500 employees and 35 branch offices, throughout Italy, in Belgium, and (outside the EU) in Brazil. The Engineering Group operates through seven business units: Finance, Central Government, Local Government and Healthcare, Oil Transportation and Services, Utility, Industry and Telecom, supported by an SAP transverse skills centre and by its Central Office for Research & Innovation, with researchers active in Italian and EU projects. Engineering was one of the first Italian companies to adopt the Quality standard ISO 9001 in the early 1990s. Since 1996 the company has adopted NATO standard AQAP 2110/160 certification. And recently the production units have been certified CMMI® level 3. The Pont Saint Martin Service Centre (PSM) provides to more than 100 Italian and international customers, 40.000 workplaces, 1000 remote connections, 10.000 electronic mail boxes and about 7000 SAP users. The R&D Department, is organised to work in strict cooperation with business divisions in order to facilitate knowledge and technology transfer. The R&D lab is involved in the NESSI and NEM ETPs. Currently the Distributed Computing R&D Unit is involved in a number of grids and clouds-related initiative: VENUS-C, VisionCloud, Passive, TEFIS, ERINA4Africa, ERINA+, ARISTOTELE, D4Science Ecosystem.

Role in iMarine

E-IIS in the project will provide the competences, people and tools to smoothly produce quality software, integrating and testing the source code provided by developing partners (WP SA3). E-IIS will also act as resource provider ensuring access to computing and storage resources through it’s datacenter. Finally E-IIS will contribute to enhance the gCube middleware evolving the Authentication, Authorisation and Accounting, leveraging on existing open source solutions and e-Infrastructures efforts.

Expected outcome from iMarine

Through iMarine, E-IIS will position itself as primary candidate to provide commercial support and resource provisioning to the CoPs. As secondary outcome E-IIS will support the evolution of two open source solutions, key for the Company and the e-Infrastructures Communities, namely the SOA3, on Authentication, Authorisation and Accounting on federated domains, and ETICS, a build and test automation tool.

Key personnel

Lucia Bonelli gratuated in Computer Science at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 1998 and she joined Engineering Ingegneria Informatica R&D laboratory in the same year, where she was software engineer in Information Security projects concerning the integration of cryptographic functionalities in web applications. She also performed short consulting activities in public administration projects. At the end of 2000 she joined Schumberger Worldwide, where she worked both as project manager and project engineer on projects related to SIM Card application. At 2003 she moved to Security Consultants group of SchlumbergerSema (now Engineering.it, belonging to Engineering group) and at 2006 she was appointed as Technical Responsible of “Digital Signature” framework of the Public Administration “Regione Siciliana – PiattaformaTelematica Integrata” Project. In October 2009 she joined again the R&D lab of Engineering group, where she’s team leader in research projects dealing with security on distributed Infrastructures.

University of Strathclyde (US), United Kingdom

With its 5 faculties and 44 departments, the University of Strathclyde is the second largest in Glasgow, Scotland, holding a long-standing worldwide reputation for excellence in academic research and innovation. The Department of Computer and Information Sciences in the faculty of Science undertakes world-class research in Information Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Software Engineering, and prides itself in its external research collaborations in Scotland, the rest of the UK, and abroad. Over the past six years, US has been involved in a number of projects directly or indirectly related to the aim of iMarine, including, Diligent (FP6), D4Science (FP7), and D4Science-II (FP7).

Role in iMarine

In the context of iMarine, US will expand its work in the following areas: (a) back-end services for distributed information retrieval, content management, and task execution (b) application framework against which all the services of the infrastructure are implemented.

Expected outcome from iMarine

iMarine will give US the opportunity to pursue further its core goals of investigating programming models and architectural principles for widely distributed and loosely-coupled system.

Key personnel

Fabio Simeoni is a graduate from the Department of Mathematics of the University 'La Sapienza' in Rome and has obtained his Msc. Degree in Advanced Information Systems from Glasgow University, in Scotland. Since 1999, he has been working as a Senior Researcher at the Department of Computer and Information Sciences of the University of Strathclyde, investigating programming models and architectural principles for widely distributed and loosely-coupled systems, particularly in relation to information retrieval and content management services in the context of large-scale digital infrastructures. Since 2004, he has been involved in the Diligent, D4Science, and D4Science-II projects, where he has led the development of an application framework for service development, as well as back-end services for content-management, distributed information retrieval, and task execution.

Richard Connor has been working in computer systems research since 1985, when he became part of Persistent Programming Research Group at St Andrews. He moved to Glasgow University in 1997 as an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow, and formed a research group investigating the use of persistent language paradigms within the context of Internet and global computation systems. In 1999 he moved to a chair of Computer Science at the University of Strathclyde, and the primary focus of his group's work there is in effective and efficient query systems for semistructured, globally distributed information. Professor Connor is a member of the EPSRC peer review college, and has served on panels for computer science, software technologies, health informatics, advanced and senior fellowships, and JREI. He has chaired panels in software technologies and CS advanced fellowships. Since 1999 he has worked as a consultant to the Research and Standards group at Reuters. He is a member of the advisory board of the Kelvin Institute, and is a Senior Consultant to Enigmatec Corporation Ltd, a software technology company funded by Amadeus Capital Partners, Pentech Ventures, and Intel.

Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH), Greece

The Institute of Computer Science has had a relatively long history and recognized tradition, since its establishment in 1983, in conducting basic and applied research, developing applications and products, providing services, and playing a leading role in Greece and internationally, in the fields of Information and Communication Technologies. It is the top-rated research institute in Greece in the area of ICT, and represents Greece within the ERCIM network of European ICT institutes.

The FORTH-ICS Information Systems (ISL) Laboratory combines expertise in knowledge representation and reasoning, database systems, net-centric information systems, and conceptual modelling. Its grand research challenge is to succeed in the transition from traditional information systems, such as information retrieval systems, database and workflow management systems, to semantically rich, large-scale, adaptive information systems. The activities of ISL are structured around (a) Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, (b) Web Data and Knowledge Integration and Adaptation, and (c) Service-Oriented Computing.

FORTH-ICS has a long experience in participating in EU and national projects. ISL has been involved in a number of projects directly or indirectly related to the aim of this proposal (e.g. CASPAR) and currently is participating in the IST FP6 projects ACGT and KP-Lab, and the IST FP7 projects 3DCOFORM, PlugIT and the PlanetData NoE, as well as the APARSEN NoE (starting 2011). ISL comprises 8 researchers and more than 20 members of technical staff.

Role in iMarine

ISL will focus on issues regarding (a) the management of taxonomic/ontological data/metadata, and (b) the modeling, representation and exchange of provenance information of the various digital objects on the basis on the processes that affect them.

Expected outcome from iMarine

iMarine will give FORTH the opportunity to pursue further its core goals of investigating various novel techniques for semantic data management.

Key personnel

Yannis Tzitzikas is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Crete and Associate Researcher in Information Systems Lab at FORTH-ICS. His research interests fall in the intersection of the Information Systems, Information Indexing and Retrieval, and Conceptual Modeling. His research has focused a lot on taxonomic data and recently to ontology-based modelling of provenance information. The results of his research have been published in more than 60 papers in refereed international conferences and journals, and he has received two best paper awards (at CIA’2003 and ISWC’07).

Terradue s.r.l. (Terradue), Italy

Terradue s.r.l. is an Italian SME created early February 2006 supported by the Lazio’s Business Innovation Centre (BIC) and the ESA program of pre-incubation and incubation, has expertise in the development and integration of geospatial services in a Grid environment for operational settings. Core elements of the company work in the development of Grid/Cloud infrastructures in ESA to support Earth Observation operational applications and services.

From global environmental analysis using massive amounts of EO data, to regional land change detection with complex 3rd party algorithms, Terradue offers a specialist service for the management and distribution of very large spatial data sets complemented with Grid data inventory, query and processing systems, carried out collaboratively with open source projects.

Role in iMarine

Terradue will participate in NA3, JRA2, JRA3 and JRA4.

Expected outcome from iMarine

Through iMarine, Terradue will pursue its research and development activities in e-science infrastructures and in particular in the discovery, catalogue and fast geographical data access domains.

Key personnel

Dr Pedro Gonçalves - Terradue founder, he is an Environmental Engineer with a PhD on ‘Scale Invariance of Forest Fires Spatial Patterns -Environmental Modelling in a Global Distributed Data Access Architecture’. Pedro did a post-doc in ESA-ESRIN where he lead the development and transfer to operations of Grid Processing on-Demand (G-POD) a Grid based Web Services infrastructure for EO applications development using Globus Software and LCG (CERN) software. Pedro is the Chief Technical Officer and one of the two founders of Terradue Srl. Pedro deals with the OGC related activities and he is currently the editor of the OpenGIS® Catalogue Service Implementation Specification, Version 3.0 - Part 4: OpenSearch Query Interface (10-032). Pedro Gonçalves is also member of the GEOSS Architecture and Data Committee. GEO is the Group on Earth Observations and is coordinating efforts to build a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). The Architecture and Data Committee supports GEO in all architecture and data management aspects of its design, coordination, and implementation for comprehensive, coordinated, and sustained Earth observations.

Fabrice Brito - Terradue founder and Project Manager, he is a Forestry Engineer. Fabrice deals with the project management aspects of Terradue projects and provides technical support in given areas. Fabrice spent almost four years in ESRIN where he has been responsible for the Grid processing on-Demand evolution and support. He participated in the development of the G-POD components such as its Web Portal and EO services, design and integration of remote sensing data processing services used for the production of several environmental data layers and all scientific projects supported by the ESA-ESRIN Grid on-Demand Infrastructure, and integration into the Grid on-demand of scientific applications. Within Terradue, Fabrice spends part of his time as the Chief Executive Officer dealing with the administrative and management activities and the remaining complementing Pedro in the technical aspects of the Terradue projects.

Trust-IT Services Ltd. (Trust-IT), United Kingdom

Trust-IT Services Ltd (www.trust-itservices.com) has built an experienced and interdisciplinary team of professionals to deliver specialized services particularly in rapidly evolving, internationally distributed communities in areas such as on cloud computing, data infrastructures, digital libraries, grid computing for collaborative research and international co-operation.

Trust-IT’s mission is to serve and partnership with leading organizations in Europe and globally, and reinforce the Open Standards message in Europe through its role in the European Chapter of the Open Grid Forum (OGF.eeig). Specialized services include high-scale, international events, building networked enterprise and scientific communities, marketing and visual communication strategies, copywriting and media outreach, market research & impact reporting, international co-operation and eTraining leveraging innovative web-based tools.

Role in iMarine

Trust-IT will lead NA4 - Communication, Dissemination and Training and provide support of related project performance indicators and impact reporting.

Expected outcome from iMarine

Through iMarine, Trust-IT is in line with its mission of delivering high-quality, large scale international events, networked communities and eTraining. Trust-IT has successfully partnered with CNR-ISTI, and several members of the Consortium, including ERCIM over two EC Framework Programmes assisting them in building networked communities, ensuring high-level insights and communicating research results and project achievements with focus and efficiency.

Key personnel

Hilary Hanahoe is a Trust-IT Director with a focus on the company’s international co-operation services & strategies coupled with high-level deployment of marketing and dissemination strategies. She currently serves as Coordinator of GRDI2020 (A Vision for Global Research Data Infrastructures of the Future), which brings together a focused group of internationally renowned experts. She brings to the PROPOSAL over 15 years of hands-on experience in administratively and scientifically co-ordinating complex international projects in ICT, managing high-level, multi-platform events, and considerable knowledge of EU research and innovation policies on a global level gained through her involvement in European funded initiatives since 1998.

Stephanie Parker is Project Manager and Communications Specialist at Trust-IT. She currently serves as Dissemination and eTraining Manager in DL.org (231551) and Dissemination Manager in VENUS-C (261565). She has extensive experience in working with the public and private sectors, interacting with high-profile innovators and the media on a regular basis, and creating effective communication and outreach strategies. She brings to the PROPOSAL, considerable knowledge and experience gained from European and regionally funded initiatives particularly on distributed computing, open standards, digital libraries and impact reporting.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), Italy

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the largest autonomous agency within the United Nations system, is active in land and water development, plant and animal production, forestry, fisheries, economic and social policy, investment, nutrition, food standards and commodities and trade. Its specific priority is encouraging sustainable agriculture and rural development, a long-term strategy for the conservation and management of natural resources.

The Fisheries and Aquaculture Information and Statistics Service (FIPS) is responsible for global statistics and information on fisheries and aquaculture. FIPS also coordinates the development of international standards for fishery and aquaculture statistics (CWP), and supports partnership arrangements for the collation and sharing of information (FIRMS, ASFA). FIPS maintains FAO’s Fisheries Global Information System (FIGIS) through which Departments information is disseminated.

The Knowledge Information System branch of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (CIOK) supplies and supports information systems solutions to better deliver the scientific and technical programme of work of the Organization. CIOK has considerable experience and capacity to provide and support information systems solutions in the domain of Agriculture and Consumer Protection, Economic and Social Development, Fisheries and Aquaculture, Forestry, Natural Resources Management and Environment.

Role in iMarine

FAO will lead WP NA3 and have inputs in SA and JRA regarding the development of applications and interoperable software. The FAO team handles a number of tasks that falls within its expertise.

Expected outcome from iMarine

FAO’s mission to facilitate the exchange of data, information and knowledge in its domain requires development of standards, information exchange partnerships, and supporting tools. FAO expects the iMarine Data e-Infrastructure to support the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Community, and that the community will help identify solutions to the data infrastructure’s sustainability.

Key personnel

Marc Taconet ([e-mail]) holds a Master's degree in Fisheries sciences. He has been working with FAO since 1987 in various African countries starting with fishery statistics. Since 1999 he leads as Senior Fisheries Information Officer the development of the Fisheries Global Information System (FIGIS) with about 15 persons. In the two successive D4Science projects, he is holding the role of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Resources Management (FARM) Communities Manager. In this project M. Taconet will be the chair of the iMarine’s Board.

Anton Ellenbroek ([e-mail]) holds an MSc in Biology. After working with IUCN-NL and in Oracle projects, he joined FAO in 2000, developing information systems. He currently works as Communities Technical Coordinator for the D4Science-II project.

Karl Morteo ([e-mail]) holds an M.Sc. in Intelligent Knowledge Based Systems from the Cranfield University, UK and a B.Sc. in Computational Science from the University of Leeds. He has worked with Deutsche Bank (Morgan Grenfell & Co.), European Space Agency (ESA) and British Telecommunications plc. He joined FAO in 1991 and is now a systems Development Specialist in CIOK leading the Knowledge Information System Services and today manages a team of over 30 IT professionals, with a portfolio of 60 plus information systems. He currently establishes a corporate technical data repository (TechCDR infrastructure) which encompasses an enterprise service bus and digital assets, geospatial and statistical data warehouses.

Fishbase Information & Research Group Inc. (FIN), Philippines

The FishBase Information and Research Group, Inc. (FIN), is non-governmental organization established in the Philippines in 2003. FIN receives continuing support from the FishBase Consortium, a group of nine international institutes .

FIN’s original mandate is to support the growth of FishBase, a public domain information system dedicated to enhance understanding, conservation and management of fishes worldwide; to support interaction of the FishBase team with international experts on taxonomy, ichthyology, biodiversity and fisheries; to support participation in cutting-edge research in these fields; and to support the interaction with FishBase users and partners worldwide to make sure their needs and contributions are accommodated. FishBase is currently the largest global services information system with about 1.3 million visitors per month and over 1,300 citations in scientific literature.

FIN, in close collaboration with the FishBase and SeaLifeBase teams of the WorldFish Center, has worked in more than 10 projects involving fisheries and biodiversity databases and research with funding from international and national donors. WorldFish provides the Scientific Direction through Nicolas Bailly.

The FIN AquaMaps application produces range maps for marine and freshwater species, and includes tools for cross species analyses that already benefit from a large data infrastructure.

Role in iMarine

FIN will contribute to the CoP Board’s activities with particular focus on i) the generic species prediction modelling application specifications, and ii) the development of policies and implementation guidelines regarding interoperability standards.

Expected outcome from iMarine

FIN’s mandate is to enhance understanding, conservation and management of fishes worldwide, and to support interaction among biologist. FIN expects the iMarine Data e-Infrastructure to bring interactive predictive species and biodiversity modelling to a wide group of expert-users, to help them increase their understanding of the biology and safeguard Ocean biodiversity.

Key personnel

Nicolas Bailly will act as Scientific Supervisor in his capacity as the Scientific Director of FIN. Dr. Bailly is a senior scientist at WorldFish. He has participated on the two previous D4Science projects. He has more than 25 years experience in Biodiversity informatics and participated to many European projects when working at MNHN. Since 2005, he is the project manager of FishBase and Scientific Adviser of SeaLifeBase in the Philippines. He is chair of the taxonomic group of Catalogue of Life. Within the project, he will also participate to the joint committee on standards.

Mary Ann Bimbao will be Administrator for this initiative. She is a founding member of FIN and is the Executive Director of FIN. She has more than 20 years of experience in various projects involving people’s organizations, non-governmental organizations, research organizations and academic institution in the developing world. She specializes in the fields of fisheries economics and gender issues. She has created databases on socio-economics particularly, having significantly contributed to the development of RESTORE (Research Tool for Natural Resources Management, Monitoring and Evaluation), a tool that comprises a set of participatory research procedures and computer-based analysis for sustainability.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – UNESCO (UNESCO), France

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) works to create the conditions for dialogue among civilizations, cultures and peoples, based upon respect for commonly shared values. The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) is part of UNESCO, dealing specifically with all marine matters. The International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) is a programme of IOC specialising in data and Information management. The Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) was created as the data integration component of the Census of Marine Life, a ten-year project to study what lived, what lives, and what will live in he oceans. In its Executive Committee of June 2010 held in Paris, IOC has decided to adopt OBIS as one of its activities under its IODE programme.

OBIS is an evolving strategic alliance of people and organizations sharing a vision to make marine biogeographic data, from all over the world, freely available over the World Wide Web. OBIS offers seekers of data about marine biodiversity a site where they can find information about species from A to Z for all parts of the world oceans. At the time of writing, OBIS contained about 30 million distribution records sources from nearly 1000 individual data sets. The uptake of OBIS is increasing, with a growing number of publications based on OBIS data, and a rapidly increasing involvement of OBIS in international and intergovernmental organisations.

Role in iMarine

The OBIS data will be a cornerstone in the data e-Infrastructure as envisaged by iMarine. It will provide access to all project components on primary data on species distributions. Combining OBIS data with physical oceanographic data on temperature, salinity, pH and other physical oceanographic data will enable sophisticated analysis. Through this, OBIS will make a contribution to all business cases supported by the project, and provide the biodiversity context for them.

Expected outcome from iMarine

The combination of OBIS primary data on species distributions with other types of oceanographic data will allow for a unique environment in which to analyse and model the data. The tools for environmental niche modelling and other range mapping models will greatly enhance OBIS’ capacity to analyse the data, and to make predictions about shifts in species distribution in response to global change.

Key personnel

Dr Edward Vanden Berghe is OBIS Executive Director. His experience is mainly in data- and information management for marine sciences; with a background in biology, his main interests are in biogeography and in the digitisation of taxonomic information. In his position as OBIS Executive Director, and before that as manager of the Flemish Marine Data and Information Centre, he has developed IT applications to support marine sciences, and been actively involved in developing and implementing international standards.

Peter Pissierssens will serve as the Administrator for this initiative. Mr Pissierssens is the Head of the IOC Project Office for IODE (Oostende, Belgium), UNESCO Senior Programme Specialist and IODE Programme Coordinator at the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO. Mr Pissierssens has over 20 years of experience working in international organizations as programme manager with special emphasis on oceanographic data and information exchange.

Centro de Referencia em Informacao Ambiental (CRIA), Brasil

The Reference Center on Environmental Information (Centro de Referência em Informação Ambiental - CRIA, www.cria.org.br) is a Brazilian not-for-profit organization established in December 2000 with the mission to contribute to the sustainable use of Brazilian biodiversity. CRIA was accredited in 2002 by the Brazilian Ministry of Justice as an Organization of Civil Society of Public Interest (OSCIP). With a technical staff of 10 specialists, CRIA´s work is carried out in close collaboration with numerous organizations. The activities are focused on the development of tools, applications and information systems to support the integration, dissemination and use of biodiversity data. CRIA participated in many international projects including BioGeomancer, Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), GBIF data portal, Incofish, BiodiversityWorld, and IABIN Invasives Information Network (I3N). As a global player in development of tools for biodiversity science, CRIA´s main achievements includes participation in development of DiGIR and TAPIR (protocols to serve and transfer biodiversity data among providers and users), OpenModeller (a platform for niche estimation), and geoLoc (an automated georeferencing platform). CRIA has set up the speciesLink (http://splink.cria.org.br/) a network that is currently integrating almost 4 million records from nearly 200 biological collections.

Role in iMarine

CRIA´s contribution to the iMarine Project will be based on its experience on the development of information systems  for the management and dissemination of biodiversity data. The basis for CRIA´s participation is the expertise with software development to insure data quality, fitness of use and innovative feedback to data providers about the quality and use of their data. The CRIA´s suite of tools for data cleaning provide efficient “scans” of data sets, detecting a broad suite of errors, inconsistencies, and potential problems. Through the development of interoperability mechanisms and applications, CRIA will provide speciesLink data and services to iMarine.

Expected outcome from iMarine

The participation in the iMarine Project is fully in line with CRIA´s mission to contribute to the sustainable use biodiversity through the dissemination information. This project is an excellent opportunity for the development of mechanisms at CRIA to improve the provision of data and services for Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries.

Key personnel

Vanderlei Perez Canhos the main iMarine Project contact is President Director of CRIA. Vanderlei earned a Master in Food Sciences at the University of Campinas (Unicamp), followed by a PhD degree in Food Microbiology at Oregon State University (OSU). After acting as a professor of Food Microbiology at Unicamp, he focused his work on the development of strategies for the implementation of the Brazilian biodiversity data infrastructure. Vanderlei was President of the Executive Board of the World Federation for Culture Collections (1996-2000), and consultant to the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (Task Force on Biological Resource Centers, 2001-2006). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Species 2000/Catalogue of Life and the GRDI2020 Advisory Board.

Alexandre MARINO will help in implementing technical solutions to the dynamic integration of I-MARINE and speciesLink data, and will develop applications to support data quality improvement. Graduated in Computer Science, Alexandre has specialization in Geographical Information Systems. Working for CRIA since 2000 he developed geographic web tools including the geographic coordinate converter and the Brazilian localities database to assist data providers in geo-referencing their data. Alexandre will work on the implementation of data cleaning tools to facilitate the detection and "flagging " of potential errors to support data quality. Currently Alexandre is working on the migration of the speciesLink DiGIR providers to TAPIR/TapirLink providers.

Dora Ann LANGE CANHOS , CRIA´s Associate Director in charge of international collaborative arrangements is the speciesLink project PI.  Dora is a member of the CODATA and the GEO BON Steering Committees, and CRIA´s representative at the Clearing-House Mechanism Informal Advisory Committee of the CBD. She acted as member of the GBIF Foreword Looking Review Committee (2009-2010), CODATA Task Group on Preservation and Archiving of Scientific and Technical Data in Developing Countries (http://www.codata.org/2003-2008).

Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD), France

The IRD (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, http://www.ird.fr) is a government research organisation jointly administered by the French ministry responsible for Research and the Foreign Affairs ministry. The annual budget of the institute is about 230 M€ enabling it to employ 2208 people, including 829 scientists and 1040 engineers, technicians and administrative staff, 38 % working overseas. The IRD is organized into 60 research and service units that conduct research programs oriented toward the study of the relations between man and his environment. Most of the programs take place in Africa, in the Indian Ocean, in Latin America, in Asia and in the Pacific. The IRD publications database (http://www.bondy.ird.fr/pleins_textes) contains 60 000 references to IRD research publications.

IRD will be involved in iMarine project through the Mixed Research Unit units 212 EME Exploited Marine Ecosystems focusing on Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF) based in Sète, France (http://www.crh-sete.org) and particularly through its “Pole Observatoire” dedicated to collection, management and diffusion of data and information on Mediterranean and tropical marine ecosystems. Within this Pole, the Tuna Observatory (OT, http://www.ot.ird.fr) is a dedicated organization in charge within the UE Data Collection Framework of monitoring the European tuna fishing fleets working in Atlantic and Indian tropical oceans and Ecoscope (http://www.ecoscope.org), an integrative project in charge of gathering, integrating and diffusing information pertinent for EAF produced by the research unit.

Role in iMarine

IRD will contribute to iMarine Project with its experience on data management and information system skills. IRD will also contribute with its own databases on tropical fisheries and ecosystems mainly in western and eastern Africa.

Expected outcome from iMarine

Through iMarine, UMR EME of IRD is fully in line with its mission of “Contribution to Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries”. This project is an excellent opportunity to bring on an international forum and within a recognized Community of Practice its concerns, data and experience on management and diffusion of data and information for Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries. This project will help UMR EME achieving its own research objectives with focus and efficiency.

Key personnel

Julien Barde will be the main contact at IRD's to deal with data interoperability issues by using ontologies and implementing standards for (meta)data and related access protocols. His work focus on developing information system driven by standards related to the domain of Semantic Web (W3C), spatial information (OGC and netCDF related standards), biodiversity (TDWG) and fisheries (COST). Working for IRD since 2008, Julien is in charge of Ecoscope project and of a data management Working Package for the MACROES (Macroscope for oceanic systems) project funded by French National Research Agency (ANR). He had previous work experiences related to information and knowledge sharing within the framework of a coastal zone management project on the French Mediterranean at the Maison de la télédétection of Montpellier (France) and as a postdoctoral research fellow for an ocean observatory project at MBARI, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (USA). Julien earned a Master in Fisheries Sciences and a Master in Spatial Information Treatment at AgroCampus Rennes (France) followed by a Ph.D. in Computer Sciences at Montpellier Sciences University (France).

Pascal Cauquil will help in implementing technical solutions to share information and knowledge within the project. As an experimented developer in charge of Ecoscope application, Pascal acquired strong skills in setting up Semantic Web applications. Working for IRD since 2006, Pascal is leading the development of various Websites for marine resources management projects (Indiseas) and manages databases related to Data Collection Framework for tropical tuna fisheries in Indian and Atlantic Oceans. His knowledge of different languages and related technologies (Java, RDBMS, SQL, XML, RDF, OWL, SPARQL, etc.) will help in making relevant choices. Previously, he has contributed on ISTAM, a project funded by the European Union to set up an information system prototype about fisheries in West Africa. Before working at IRD, Pascal was information system engineer in several telecommunications companies (mainly Genesys Conferencing). Pascal did his graduate studies at 3iL (Institut d'Ingénierie Informatique de Limoges) and obtained an engineer diploma in computer and information systems.

Pierre CHAVANCE is a senior scientific officer working on fisheries biology for IRD since 1990. He has taken an active part in various scientific programmes aimed at consolidating the national institutions responsible for monitoring marine resources and fisheries in developing countries such as Mauritania (1986-1990), Guinea (1990-1996), Senegal (1999-2004). These programmes have contributed to the monitoring of fishery resources and to the promotion of scientifically informed management decisions. He coordinated the StatBase module [5] of the FIAS (UE) programme for the IRD aiming at the development of a statistical tool for fisheries statistics in West Africa, this tool being presently implemented in East Africa through the World Bank SWIOFP project (http://www.swiofp.net). Pierre CHAVANCE is the actual coordinator of the Data Collection Framework - French national programme for the tropical tuna fishery. He is member of the Scientific Committees of SWIOFC (Southwest Indian Ocean Fishery Commission) and IOTC (Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, http://www.iotc.org).