FINDIT · A cutting edge platform for data management and analysis to assist European fish aquaculture in its development towards higher performance and competitiveness

The idea of developing a systematic approach to collect and analyse hatchery data across sites and companies was conceived during the FineFish project (EU FP6, COLL-CT-2005-012451, “Improving sustainability of European fish aquaculture by control of malformations”). An innovative IT solution, ‘FindIT’, was designed to enable sectoral benchmarking, allowing a hatchery to measure its own performance against consolidated data from other hatcheries. No formal tool existed for this approach before FindIT. The FindIT prototype led rapidly to the development of a cloud-based data collection and storage system allowing professional hatcheries not only to organise and store their monitoring data but also to compute other indicators useful for both monitoring and benchmarking of individual hatcheries at a European level. Malformation rate was the main key performance indicator (KPI) for FineFish but it was realised that other KPIs should be considered and integrated in FindIT’s capacities, such as resistance to disease, growth rate, morphology, survival etc. - factors that are vital for successful and competitive aquaculture.With extensive data collection and analyses – using innovative data-mining techniques - critical factors can be discovered that explain the variability of these KPIs, which will lead to preventive and corrective actions that will continuously improve competitiveness of hatchery operations and support future strategic decisions.FindIT is a functional prototype but developments are needed to bring the system to a commercial level for use by a widespread community of users. To quantify and fill the actual market gap for such a tool, the applicability of FindIT has to be demonstrated so that operators will fully understand the potential, capabilities and benefits of this innovative solution. The project will study the market potential and prepare a business plan for FindIT, forseeing the creation of a stand-alone activity for its commercial exploitation.