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

References

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[17]Profile of the iMarine Board

17.1iMarine Board members

Centro de Referência em Informação Ambiental (CRIA)

URL: www.cria.org.br

Description: The Centro de Referência em Informação Ambiental, CRIA (Reference Center on Environmental Information) is a not-for-profit, non-government organization. Its aim is to contribute towards a more sustainable use of Brazil's biodiversity through the dissemination of high quality information and education. CRIA develops software for fundamental niche modelling. The software includes facilities for reading species occurrence and environmental data, the selection of environmental layers on which the model should be based, creating a niche model, and projecting the model into an environmental scenario.  A number of algorithms are provided as plug-ins, including GARP, Climate Space Model, Bioclimatic Envelopes, Support Vector Machines and others.

Role of the representative in the iMarine Board: Dr. Vanderlei Perez CANHOS, President Director of the Reference Center on Environmental Information (CRIA) which leads the development of the OpenModeller Java project, will be a Board Member with particular focus on distributed data processing services for species distribution prediction modelling.

FAO/FIGIS

URL: www.fao.org/fishery/figis

Description: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is the largest autonomous agency within the United Nations.

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 the Fisheries and Aquaculture Department’s information is disseminated.

The Fisheries Global Information System (FIGIS) provides the web based infrastructure to the Fisheries and Aquaculture Department’s integrated information resources, and the backbone to global information partnerships such as the Fishery Resources Monitoring System (FIRMS). It’s also within FIGIS that the development of OpenSDMX and Linked Open Data semantic services have been initiated.

Role of the representative in the iMarine Board: Marc TACONET, FAO Senior fishery information Officer, is responsible for FIGIS and leads a team of developers and information management and communication specialists of about 15 persons. He is also Secretary of the FIRMS partnership, and has held the role of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Resources Management (FARM) Communities Manager in D4Science. In this project M. Taconet will be the chair of the iMarine’s Board.

FAO/TechCDR

Description: The Knowledge Information System branch of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UNFAO/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 of the representative in the iMarine Board: Karl MORTEO, Systems Development Specialist in UNFAO/CIOK leading the Knowledge Information System Services, will be a member of the iMarine Board, representing more particularly the interests of interoperability with FAO’s TechCDR infrastructure, including for SDMX and Semantic software components.

FAO OEKC

Description: The Office of Knowledge Exchange, Research and extension (OEKC) provides leadership towards an integrated approach to the generation, management, sharing, communication and transfer of knowledge and information related to food, agriculture and towards the sustainable use of the earth’s natural resources in order to respond to the knowledge, technology and capacity development needs of member countries and the fostering of research, innovation, extension and learning. Within the Office the team “knowledge standards and services” is responsible for metadata and vocabularies.

Role of the representative in the iMarine Board: Johannes KEIZER, leader of the OEKC team “knowledge standards and services“, responsible for the international AGRIS network and the multilingual agricultural thesaurus, AGROVOC, and outreach manager of the D4Science-II project, will contribute in the Board with particular focus on semantic approaches and Linked Open Data. His alternate will be Yves Jaques who has coordinated FAO’s inputs in the EC NeOn project .

FIN/Aquamaps

URL: http://www.fishbase.org/search.php

Description: The FishBase Information and Research Group, Inc. (FIN), 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 on fishes with about 1.3 million visitors per month and over 1,300 citations in scientific literature.

FIN has been created and is continuously supported by the FishBase Consortium, a group of nine international institutes and organizations.

Role of the representative in the iMarine Board: Nicolas BAILLY, Scientific Director of FIN, contributes to the Board’s activities with particular focus on (i) the generic species occurrence modelling , and (ii) the development of policies and implementation guidelines regarding interoperability standards.

ICES

URL: http://www.ices.dk/indexfla.asp

Description: The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) coordinates and promotes marine research on oceanography, the marine environment, the marine ecosystem, and on living marine resources in the North Atlantic. Members of the ICES community now include all coastal states bordering the North Atlantic and the Baltic Sea, with affiliate members in the Mediterranean Sea and southern hemisphere.

ICES is a network of more than 2200 scientists from 200 institutes linked by an intergovernmental agreement (the ICES Convention) to add value to national research efforts.

Scientists working through ICES gather information about the marine ecosystem. The 20 member countries that fund and support ICES use this advice to help them manage the North Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas.

Role of the representative in the iMarine Board: Neil HOLDSWORTH, data management specialist responsible for ICES data center, will contribute in the area of standards and vocabularies related to iMarine data infrastructure and ensure the connection between EC’s Data Collection Framework (DCF) data services and the linkages to other European data infrastructures (EMODNET, WISE-Marine, EurOBIS).

IRD/ECOSCOPE

URL: http://www.ecoscopebc.ird.fr/EcoscopeKB

Description: The IRD conducts research programs oriented towards 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. One of its research program targets Exploited Marine Ecosystems focusing on Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF) and particularly its “Pole Observatoire” is dedicated to the collection, management and diffusion of data and information on Mediterranean and tropical marine ecosystems. Ecoscope is the Observatoire’s integrating application to facilitate data discovery and sharing across IRD’s heterogeneous sources using semantic technologies.

Role of the representative in the iMarine Board: Julien BARDE, IRD's information system specialist, will provide inputs on data interoperability using ontologies and implementing standards for (meta)data and related access protocols. His work focuses on developing information system driven by standards related to Semantic Web (W3C), spatial information (OGC and netCDF related standards), biodiversity (TDWG) and fisheries (COST).

Species2000/i4Life

URL: www.i4life.eu

Description: The i4Life project is to establish a Virtual Research Community that will enable participating partners, all global projects with activities relevant to biodiversity data management, to engage in a common programme enumerating the extent of life on earth. It builds on the common need of each organisation to specify the entire set of organisms, their growing use of the Catalogue of Life as a common taxonomic resource alongside their own catalogues, and the different expertise that each programme brings to the task.

Role of the representative in the iMarine Board: Frank BISBY, who holds a managerial role in Species2000, will be advising the Board on species diversity & taxonomic information systems. His work for the Catalogue of Life and Species 2000, and knowledge of GRID technologies for building global biodiversity information networks supports all 3 business cases.

Terradue

URL: http:// www.terradue.com/

Description: The geospatial services and datasets developed by Terradue are of particular interest for the further development of a data infrastructure.

Role of the representative in the iMarine Board: Pedro GONCALVES, Geospatial Information and Earth Observation Adviser at Terradue, will help define policies on the access and use of Earth Observation data, geospatial repositories and the implementation of technologies to modify and analyze geospatial data.

UNESCO/IOC/Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS)

URL: www.iobis.org

Description: The Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) seeks to absorb, integrate, and assess isolated datasets into larger, more comprehensive overviews of life in the world’s oceans. The system stimulates research about our oceans to generate new hypotheses concerning species distributions, evolutionary processes, ecosystem services, and roles of organisms in marine systems on a local and global scale. The abstract maps that OBIS generates contribute to the ‘big picture’ of our oceans: a comprehensive, collaborative, world-wide view of our oceans.

Role of the representative in the iMarine Board: Edward VANDEN BERGHE, executive Director of OBIS, will facilitate the access to the OBIS data, and coordinate the biodiversity applications created by iMarine. His wide expertise in the field of marine data- and information management, and his knowledge of the community, will be an asset to the project, in support of all three business cases.

Vlaams instituut voor de Zee (VLIZ)

URL: www.vliz.be

Description: The Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) is the coordination and information platform for marine scientific research in Flanders. The VLIZ is a focal point for marine and coastal-related research and serves as an international contact point. The VLIZ signs cooperation agreements with Flemish research groups and administrations and furthermore integrates its activities in national and international networks. The Flemish Marine Data and Information Centre (VMDC) is the data centre of VLIZ. VLIZ also operates the European Node of OBIS, the IT infrastructure for PESI, and the World Register of Marine Species (of which ERMS is now a subset).

PESI

URL: www.eu-nomen.eu/pesi

Description: PESI provides standardised and authoritative taxonomic information by integrating and securing Europe’s taxonomically authoritative species name registers and nomenclatures (name databases) and associated exper(tise) networks that underpin the management of biodiversity in Europe. PESI defines and coordinates strategies to enhance the quality and reliability of European biodiversity information by integrating the infrastructural components of four major community networks on taxonomic indexing into a joint work programme. This will result in functional knowledge networks of taxonomic experts and regional focal points, which will collaborate on the establishment of standardised and authoritative taxonomic (meta-) data.

Role of the representative in the iMarine Board: Yde DE JONG or a colleague can join as Board Member. PESI offers resources, focussed on the marine habitat, and acts as a clearinghouse to provide services to all business cases also by exposing relevant social-economic information.

17.2iMarine Observers

MAAP/DPMA

Description: the Directorate of Fisheries and Aquaculture (DPMA) for the French Ministry of Agriculture, Food, Fisheries and Rural Development (MAAP) is the official contact point of DG MARE and EUROSTAT with regards to fishery information and statistics workflow. In the recent years, it has been concentrating on drastic modernization of its information system for fisheries and aquaculture (ISFA) in response to EC’s Fishery Data Collection Framework.

The main objectives of ISFA is to provide integrated business solutions and data repositories through web browser interface and a context for data collection and data management to improve the timeliness and accuracy of nationwide data.

Role of the representative in the iMarine Board: Olivier FORNER is office manager of the information system for fisheries and aquaculture (ISFA). He is coordinating the fisheries projects portfolio among the French partners (Maritime Affairs, FranceAgriMer, Producers Organizations, Ifremer), and between France and EU. He will contribute in the Board his experience with reference to the policy he has set up for data exchange in order to manage all exchange between vessels, partners, members states and regional fisheries management organizations

European Commission (EC - Eurostat and/or DG MARE)

Description: Eurostat is the statistical office of the European Union based in Luxembourg. Its task is to provide the European Union with statistics at European level that enable comparisons between countries and regions. For fisheries, Eurostat's statistics work programme is first and foremost designed to support the European Commission's Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE) to analyse different aspects of the European Union's common fisheries policy.  Eurostat's fisheries collection, which is one of the largest and most comprehensive databases of fisheries statistics in the world, is also used to respond to requests from other EU institutions, primarily the European Parliament and the Council, as well as national authorities, international fisheries organisations and the general public. Eurostat acts as the European Commission representative to the Co-ordinating Working party for Fisheries (CWP).

Description: The Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE) is the Commission department responsible for the implementation of the Common Fisheries policy and of the Integrated Maritime Policy. With a staff of about 400 and based in Brussels, DG MARE is made up of 6 Directorates dealing with all aspects of both policies, including among others conservation, control, market measures, structural actions and international relations relating to fisheries.

Role of the representative in the iMarine Board: Considering Eurostat’s ongoing cooperation with FAO through the CWP in developing the new tools for data transmission, sharing and dissemination which is currently a major priority for EU fisheries statistics, an Observer role from either Eurostat and/or DG MARE is important for policy and technical reasons. This role will be to ensure consistency in the developments of structured data services in particular regarding SDMX, and guidance with regards to anticipated impacts. Any eventual involvement as Observer of representative(s) of European Commission agencies will ensure that the participation rules in FP7 are followed.

GENESI-DEC

URL: http://www.genesi-dr.eu

Description: In line with long-term initiatives for Earth Observation (EO) in Europe, GENESI-DEC is an infrastructure for the integration, validation, preservation, and uniform dissemination of data which originates from space, airborne, and in-situ sensors and is stored – along with related tools, models, and knowledge artifacts – in digital repositories maintained at a number of Earth Centers dispersed all over Europe.

Role of the representative in the iMarine Board: a GENESI-DEC observer will be identified as required

IMR/Fridjoff Nansen database

URL: http://www.imr.no/om_havforskningsinstituttet/en

Description: IMR, the Institute of Marine Research, is Norway's largest centre of marine science. Amongst other programmes, the Institute carries out development collaboration activities. An important corpus of marine data is collected by the vessel “Dr. Fridtjof Nansen”, manned and operated by IMR within UNFAO programme.

Description Fritjoff Nansen database and mapping applications for species abundance: for 3 decades, the Norwegian Research Vessel Fritjoff Nansen has conducted under the UN flag scientific cruises in waters of African coastal states, with the goal to assess fishery stocks abundance levels and enabling countries to set sustainable quotas. The data are owned by the coastal states and handled in the FN database at IMR Bergen under strict policy requirements.

Role of the representative in the iMarine Board: an IMR Observer will be identified in case the project decides to develop interoperability with Fridtjoff Nansen database.

United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC)

URL: www.unep-wcmc.org

Description: UNEP-WCMC strives to be an internationally recognised Centre of Excellence for the synthesis, analysis and dissemination of global biodiversity knowledge, providing authoritative, strategic and timely information for conventions, countries, organizations and companies to use in the development and implementation of their policies and decisions.

The Centre has a mandate from the UNEP Governing Council to provide a range of biodiversity-related services to UNEP, the biodiversity-related conventions and their constituent party-states and other bodies in the non-governmental and private sectors (Decision GC 22/1/III). Other more specific mandates derive from the UNEP Governing Council, decisions taken by Conferences of the Parties to specific international conventions, the World Parks Congress and elsewhere.

UNEP-WCMC Interactive Maps System (IMapS) is designed to facilitate the integration of public-domain field data, such as distribution, abundance, migration, trends, status, photographs, and information on index beaches, together with habitat information such as presence and extent of sea grasses, coral reefs, mangroves, priority areas such as Internationally and Nationally Protected Areas, and physical background parameters. A high seas IMAPS is currently being developed as a new data platform.

Role of the representative in the iMarine Board: An Observer will be identified in case the project decides to develop interoperability with UNEP-WCMS IMAP

VLIZ/EMODNET

Description: VLIZ (described above) is part of the EMODNET project, responsible for the Biological Lot. EMODNET is a pilot component for a final operational European Marine Observation and Data Network, launched by the Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE). EMODNET aims to assemble fragmented and inaccessible marine data into interoperable, continuous and publicly available data streams for complete maritime basins.

Role of the representative in the iMarine Board: Francisco HERNANDEZ, Project coordinator and manager of the VLIZ data center, will be invited as observer in case the iMarine project decides to develop interoperability with EMODNET.

17.3iMarine Advisory Council

Serge Garcia, ex-Director of FAO Fishery and Aquaculture Resources Division, now promoting the emergence of a global EA Community of Practice notably through EAFNet, will be part of the Advisory Council representing the African LME pelagic EAF business case. Serge’s alternate will be Gabriella Bianchi, senior fishery resources officer at FAO, who leads EAFNet at global level; she will provide guidance to iMarine Board for the development of policies in the field of the Large Marine Ecosystem business case, in particular on pelagic fisheries in several African Large Marine Ecosystems.

Kajrtan Hoydal, executive Secretary of NEAFC, and chair of the Secretariat of Regional Fishery Body Network, will provide guidance regarding the Fisheries Policy and Management perspectives, in particular for the two business cases “Support to FAO’s High Seas Deep Seas programme” and “Support to EU Common Fishery Policy”. Kjartan has also a strong interest in the VMS part of the initiative.

Martin Pastoors, director of the Centre for Marine Policy, part of Wageningen University and Research Centre, and lecturer Marine Policy at Van Hall Larenstein, Leeuwarden. He is also senior researcher at IMARES, Ijmuiden. He will bring many years of experience in bridging between education and practice in marine policy, stakeholder participation in fisheries management and, managing competing claims in the coastal areas.

Patricio Bernal, ex-Executive Secretary IOC and ADG of UNESCO for IOC, is presently the coordinator of the IUCN High Seas Initiative and of the Global Oceans Biodiversity Initiative (GOBI). GOBI brings together many organisations and science groups with an interest in marine biodiversity, several of them partners in this project. The objective of GOBI is to make new data and scientific information available for the management of the ocean biodiversity resources, with particular focus on the application of the seven CBD criteria for Ecological and Biological Significant Areas (EBSA) in the Open Ocean and Deep seas.