Ecosystem Approach Community of Practice: Governance of EA-CoP

iMarine is providing tools to create synergies in the community. Main goal is synergies, data and IT is just the tool. CoPCommunity of Practice. are central.

How to govern a CoPCommunity of Practice.. The issue is to define the question ! Governance of which CoPs?; when ? (after the project); at which scale ? (solutions are different depending on the level of scaling-up).

Need a better definition of CoPCommunity of Practice.. Define Community, define Practice ! Is it world statisticians, modellers, oceanographers, data crunchers? iMarine needs to decide where the boundaries are, with clear interfaces defined. e.g. how do communities with little IT capacity interact with the infrastructure

Once the components of CoPCommunity of Practice. are identified, the structure should include a small advisory board for each CoPCommunity of Practice. that can decide/ influence governance.

In aiming at bringing together different communities (e.g. VME and EBSA), Politics are often blocking, so iMarine needs to offer a platform for discussion and exchange of opinions, in addition to the exchange of data. If the communities don’t come together, the data collected will not be used. The concept of "dashboard" might provide a response to this requirement. The dashboard is integrated to the infrastructure, allowing sharing of data and results as well as supporting group discussions, in a secure environment.

Industry and NGOs would have an interest in this form of collaboration.

Promote: - the dashboard idea - the role of the iMarine platform in EU's eRS-Fishframe-Cost environment - the outreach to Data rich on-going Policy processes: CBD/GOBI, IMO, International Seabed Authority. - Deep Seas could become client via the InDeep group headed from Southhampton