Integrated Capture Information System

Access to VREs

VREs are accessible through the D4Science portal.

Introduction to ICIS

The Integrated Capture Information System (ICIS) Virtual Research Environment (VRE), implemented during the D4Science project and further expanded in D4Science-II, integrates regional and global capture and distribution information of aquatic species, from a number of Regional Fishery Management Organisations (RFMOs) and international organisations (FAO, WorldFish Center) into a common system. The software allows for the configuration of algorithms and filters for parameters such as area, species distribution and habitat, providing a harmonised view of catch statistics and allowing the community to overlay according to pre-defined reallocation rules. To ensure broad interoperability the system  makes use of existing international standards including those agreed at the Coordinating Working Party (CWP) on Fishery Statistics and the open geospatial consortium's ISO 9115.

Integrated into the application will be query, comparison and output services allowing users to define custom data outputs and output services as tables, charts and/or maps. Aggregation and provenance metadata will also be provided. A grid-based Fishery Community Virtual Organization (VO) will be set-up to provide the integrated platform of data sources, and a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) will be tested for the ICIS application and others of interest to the community.

This initiative is in part a response to the increasing demand for global catch data with finer geographical resolution, including:

• The United Nations recommendation to FAO to “revise its global fisheries statistics database to provide information for the stocks to which the Agreement applies, as well as to high seas discrete stocks on the basis of where the catch was taken.” (Document A/CONF/.210/2006/15, Annex, Paragraph 25, 26);
• Frequent requests to separate catch between Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) and high seas;
• The CWP recommendation to respond to the UN recommendation by integrating catch statistics that Regional Fishery Bodies (RFBs) and FAO have collected, maintained, and disseminated, based on rules established in the previous CWPs (CWP-22 Report).

D4Science-II will extend the scenario with improved species occurrence data due to the synergy with AquaMaps; it will also allow the inclusion of Vessel Monitoring System Catch data at extremely high resolution to improve aquatic resource assessments. Dealing with these new types of data will require extensions of the current tools, which will in turn require the power of the ecosystem to run. In addition, its programmatic interface for interoperability will give the dynamic data import/export capabilities demanded by the community for using harmonised re-allocated data both within D4Science and within their own legacy systems.

Note: This scenario responds to the concrete demands of the scientific community, which plans to make the final outcome of D4Science-II available in its own production working environment at the end of the project.