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

1.10Resources to be committed

Overall Budget

To achieve its ambitious goals and objectives, the iMarine consortium has developed a careful financial planning covering all foreseen activities of the project. The table above summarises the costs related to the project per partner and per activity, respectively. Please note that the real and actual average person-month rates per partner were used for the calculations concerning “personnel”. The indirect costs were calculated according to the partners’ individually selected methods for determining indirect costs.

The budget has been careful distributed among the different categories and is consistent with the work to be performed.

The total project costs amount to 7 723 975 € while the requested EC Contribution is 6 191 287 € distributed as follows :

Costs Category

The total effort dedicated to iMarine by the 14 partner consortium amount to 801 person months, and the breakdown per work package is listed in Tables 1.4-6.3.1 – Work Package List(s). The Breakdown per Consortium partner is detailed in Tables 1.4-6.3.4 – Summary of Staff Effort.

This total is broken down as follows:

Cost Category	Total (€)
Personnel	4 376 767 €
Travels	242 000 €
External Costs	50 416 €
Of which : iMarine Board	44 416 €
Of which : Dissemination material	6 000 €
Subcontracting Costs	178 000 €
Of which: Audit Costs	11 500 €
Of which: Conference organisation	15 000 €
Of which : Web Channel	18 000 €
Of which : Dedicated subcontracts	145 000 €
Overhead / Indirect Costs	2 865 291 €
TOTAL project Costs	7  723 975 €
Total EU Contribution	6 191 287 €

Personnel Costs

The resources have been fairly distributed among the different work packages and the 14 partners.

The distribution of resources is detailed in the following table and chart showing the ratio of the resources per activity and the importance of the RTD and coordination activity with respectively 37% and 32% of PM of the project.

Activity	total PM
Management = WP NA1	33
Coordination = WP NA2, NA3, NA4	257
Other = WP SA1, SA2, SA3 (Services)	215
RTD activity = WP JRA1, JRA2, JR3, JR4	296
PM Whole duration / All activities	801

Travel Costs

Travel costs have been conservatively allocated amongst the 14 partners, totalling 242 000€ and representing 4% of the total requested funding of the project.

The travel expenditures were calculated and distributed based on the PM allocated to each activity and are well-balanced between the relevant activities.

iMarine Board Estimated travel costs

As describe in Section 1.3, the iMarine Board will meet twice a year and the iMarine Advisory Council will meet once per year over the 30 months.

During the last 6 month period, no meeting has been planned since the final dissemination conference will be held at M28.

Travel costs for Europe have been calculated on a basis of 750 € per travel.

The perdiem used for the estimate is the Belgium rate amounting to 232 €, as per the EU perdiem rates dated 05/07/2010.

The total budget for the iMarine Board has been allocated to ERCIM under the support activities.

Communication & Dissemination Material

The table below outlines the conservative costs estimated for the iMarine printed dissemination material. In addition to the e-copies of communication releases and project brochures, the consortium will produce hard copies of some documentation to ensure project visibility at awareness raising events as well as the production of material for the project conference in Month 28.

A total of 6 different project flyers / leaflets to be produced at different milestones in the project and for specific project events will be produced in small quantities as the main dissemination & outreach drive will involve the e-copies.

Roll-ups or project banners will be produced at the beginning of the project to be used by the consortium partners and coordinator at events and will have the iMarine branding and payoff.

Pens with the project logo and URL will be produced as cost effective giveaways for events and for the project conference.

The two different eBooks (Policy, Resources and Standards and iMarine Board Insight) will be produced and 500 hard copies of each will be printed to distribute to conference participants and stakeholders. 100 copies of each will be snail mailed together with a final project results leaflet to a selected list of policy-makers and stakeholders based on the concept that receipt of a hard copy with an accompanying letter has high impact.

Subcontracting Costs

Conference

The table below outlines the cost of the project conference to be organised in project month 28. The current estimate is based on a quotation from a Brussels based hotel for 100 participants for a one-day event and the meeting package quote includes coffee breaks, working lunch and AV equipment. Included in the estimate is the cost of a professional media company to create a project video on the event results (including interviews with participants, snapshots of the event and networking and inclusion of project images and data). Generation of press pack and conference documentation has been included in the estimate.

Web Channel costs

Web Channel and eTraining Framework:

The iMARINE web site (as described under NA4 - Communication, Dissemination and Training - TNA4.2: Web Channel and eTraining Environment) will be the focal point for the project communication and dissemination activities and the eTraining Framework (as described under NA4 - Communication, Dissemination and Training - TNA4.2: Web Channel and eTraining Environment) will be essential for the iMARINE Board virtual meetings, community-centric knowledge exchange and ensuring effective engagement across multiple stakeholders. The costs outlined below include customised development, design, operation and maintenance of web and eTraining solutions for the duration of the project.

Subcontractors

As per the description Section 2.3, three subcontractors will contribute to the project under the responsibility of FAO (beneficiary 10).

A total budget of 145 000€ is additionally allocated to FAO under the subcontracting category in order to cover the efforts and related travels of the subcontractors as per described in the table below.

Additional support to be provided by beneficiaries and stakeholders

A particular strength of the iMarine project is the amount of additional support that is estimated to be provided by the beneficiaries and associated contributors with the common motivation of achieving the project objectives. Non-funded support takes the form of staff that will be assigned for the development of semantics, SDMX and VME database; standardization of VMS data; and participation in the activities of the iMarine Board. Please refer to the following table for specifics:

Additionally, the provision of the computational and storage resources (hereafter called nodes) that compose the iMarine Data e-Infrastructure will be performed as either permanent nodes fully dedicated to the project exploitation or on-demand nodes provided for a pre-defined time, while not charging for their consumption. The participant partners will provide at least the following nodes to the infrastructure:

• 
  CNR will provide 100 concurrent typical compute instances, 5 TB storage space and 1 Gb network for data transfer;
  
• 
  NKUA will provide 50 concurrent typical compute instances, 5 TB storage space and 1 Gb network for data transfer;
  
• 
  ENG will provide up to 100 virtual small server instances, 7 TB storage space and 100 Mb network for data transfer.
  

This set of resources will be used to deploy, operate and demonstrate the capabilities of the iMarine Data e-Infrastructure and Virtual Research Environments. Additional nodes may be added according to the project requests for new Virtual Research Environments.