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

Marine life plays a vital role in the Earth's ecosystem. Wise and judicious management of all relevant resources is of paramount importance to ensure that all forms of marine life remain sustainable. However, efforts in this direction are severely hindered by extreme compartmentalization and heterogeneity at all levels and sectors: the global, national, and local organizations active in the field; the different scientific disciplines involved; the methodologies used to acquire, format and present data; the procedures used to analyze the data; and several others. The main goal of the iMarine project is, thus, to launch an initiative aimed at establishing and operating an e-infrastructure supporting the principles of the Ecosystem Approach to fisheries management and conservation of marine living resources. iMarine has three main objectives: (i) the establishment of an iMarine Board, formed by representatives of international organisations involved in this domain, which will define a sustainability-driven data-centric e-infrastructure governance model and organizational and technological policy recommendations; (ii) the management and operation of this e-Infrastructure offering user-level and application-level services that support the recommended policies and provide relevant functionality to the stakeholders; (iii) the extension, adaptation and deployment of a rich set of software components that implement these services. Instrumental in the activities of iMarine will be the establishment of an active set of collaborations with other international initiatives. The aim will be to reuse and render interoperable existing policies, technologies, and e-infrastructures. By leveraging on these collaborations and by taking advantage of additional funding that these organizations invest in the project, the number of available resources brought into play will be maximized.