Ecosystem Approach Community of Practice Overview

This page is dedicated to document the activities of the Ecosystem Approach Community of PracticeA term coined to capture an "activity system" that includes individuals who are united in action and in the meaning that "action" has for them and for the larger collective. The communities of practice are "virtual", ''i.e.'', they are not formal structures, such as departments or project teams. Instead, these communities exist in the minds of their members, are glued together by the connections they have with each other, as well as by their specific shared problems or areas of interest. The generation of knowledge in communities of practice occurs when people participate in problem solving and share the knowledge necessary to solve the problems. (EA-CoPCommunity of Practice.).

It is organised in the following three areas:

• The iMarine Board area which introduces the board, the rules governing its functioning, the working plan and the meetings;
• The Overall Workplan section which provides an overview of the iMarine Board identified activities throughout the project life span
• The Outcomes area which describes the results of the iMarine Board activities, namely (i) the results of mediation activities, the Governance mechanisms and policies governing the envisaged infrastructure, the harmonization of systems resulting from the requirements characterising the expected infrastructure, and the validation of delivered products.

The iMarine Board

The iMarine Board is a key mechanism for guaranteeing constant interactions with the EA-CoPCommunity of Practice. initiatives involved in the project. This board is described through a number of pages:

• the overview page briefly describes this board;
• the iMarine Board Rules and Procedures page describes the regulations and principles supporting the operation of this board;
• the work plan page describes the work plans of the scheduled governing board activities;
• the meetings page documents the events organised to support the board activity including their reports, recommendations and conclusions;

Overall workplan

Project activities involving the EA-CoPCommunity of Practice. take place under WP3. These activities are organized according to the three main objectives:

1. Operations of the iMarine Board:

• Meetings of the iMarine Board
• Meetings of the iMarine Advisory Council
• Mediation with the broader EA-CoPCommunity of Practice.

2. Governance and Policy developments

• Development of the Sustainability plan
• Development of Governance model
• Development of Data Policies
• Development of Software Policies
• Development of guidelines and best practices

3. Harmonization of systems and schemas Harmonization activities are organized by technical clusters and can be validated through the VREs set-up to serve the Business cases

• VREs planning
• Technical Clusters: Statistical; Biodiversity; Geospatial; Semantics

At its first session, the iMarine Board has initiated the elaboration of an overall workplan which spans across the entire project duration. This workplan provides an overview of Board's activities and related timing expectations, and is used to identify possible conflicting use of project resources in order to decide on priorities.

• Workplan overview in Excel format

• the work plan page describes the work plans of the scheduled governing board activities;

Outcomes

The primary goal of the iMarine Board is to define the data e-InfrastructureAn operational combination of digital technologies (hardware and software), resources (data and services), communications (protocols, access rights and networks), and the people and organizational structures needed to support research efforts and collaboration in the large. governance model with a focus on sustainability, and to formulate a set of organizational and technological policy recommendations regulating the resources shared and services provided by the infrastructure.

Mediation

The mediation efforts of the iMarine Board are primarily geared towards serving the three Business cases.

• the iMarine Business Cases page which combine technical requirements with organizational, political and managerial issues; they specify larger organizational concepts that may be supported by one or more VREVirtual Research Environment.'s. The page on business cases describes these from the technology perspective. Other information on organization and operation in support of the Business Cases can be found in the iMarine Board Channel.

The iMarine Board meetings constitute the primary mechanism for mediation among the EA Community of PracticeA term coined to capture an "activity system" that includes individuals who are united in action and in the meaning that "action" has for them and for the larger collective. The communities of practice are "virtual", ''i.e.'', they are not formal structures, such as departments or project teams. Instead, these communities exist in the minds of their members, are glued together by the connections they have with each other, as well as by their specific shared problems or areas of interest. The generation of knowledge in communities of practice occurs when people participate in problem solving and share the knowledge necessary to solve the problems. directly involved in the project. The meetings page documents the events organised to support the board activity including their reports, recommendations and conclusions;

• iMarine kick-off meeting
• First iMarine Board meeting - this meeting has elaborated the iMarine Board Rules and Procedures ; this page describes the regulations and principles supporting the operation of this board;
• First Advisory Countil meeting

Mediation includes liaison and outreach activities to the EA-CoPCommunity of Practice., identified by the iMarine Board:

• Presentation of iMarine to DG-MARE
• Attendance of the ICES Conference

Governance

The Governance discussed in this chapter relate to the activities of the EA-CoPCommunity of Practice. where they interact with the e-InfrastructureAn operational combination of digital technologies (hardware and software), resources (data and services), communications (protocols, access rights and networks), and the people and organizational structures needed to support research efforts and collaboration in the large.. It describes how Deliverable D3.2 (M10) and D3.3 (M29), that report on this governance, are achieved.

The Governance area contains:

• the Sustainable use of the data e-Infrastructure page;
• the Governing mechanism recommendations page;
• the iMarine Policies page;
  • the EA-CoP Data Access and Sharing Policies page;
• the iMarine Guidelines and Best Practices page;

Harmonization of systems

As mentioned in the Board's page, Board's objectives include organizing the collection of requirements, providing support to implementing solutions, and ensuring packaging of outcomes in manageable resources. This sub-set of objectives are articulated under the "Harmonization of systems"

The Requirements area contains:

• the VRE planning page which describes the EA-CoPCommunity of Practice. desiderata in terms of a composition of services and resources, delivered as a packaged single unit to the CoPCommunity of Practice.. A VREVirtual Research Environment. provides a defined set of services for a specific group of users that collaborate on a specified task or workflow. An alternative approach to VREs are gCube apps. In the context of the CoPCommunity of Practice. desiderata, no difference is made.

• the Clusters page describes how the CoPCommunity of Practice. organizes the requirements collection and discussion on high-level topics in a set of organic, but also technological clusters; geospatial, biodiversity, statistics, and semantic technologies all are supported by technologies that overlap in functionality with other clusters, yet are still easily identifiable as falling within one of the clusters.

Validation

According to the Description of Work, the goal of this activity is (i) to document status and issues on harmonization approaches, and (ii) to validate implemented policies and business cases, their functionality and conformance to requirements.

The Validation area contains:

• ...