About EcoScope

The EcoScope project will develop an interoperable platform and a robust decision-making toolbox, available through a single public portal (The EcoScopium), to promote an efficient, ecosystem-based approach to the management of fisheries. Design and development of The EcoScopium will be guided by its stakeholders, including policymakers and scientific advisory bodies, and seek to address ecosystem degradation and the anthropogenic impacts that are causing fisheries to be unsustainably exploited across European Seas.

The EcoScopium portal will provide seamless access to the EcoScope Platform, EcoScope Toolbox, EcoScope Academy, as well as other key products of the project including scientific publications, technical reports and a suite of graphics and media materials. The EcoScope Platform will organise and homogenise climatic, oceanographic, biogeochemical, biological and fisheries datasets for European Seas to a common standard type and format that will be available to the users through interactive mapping layers. The EcoScope Toolbox, a scoring system linked to the platform, will host ecosystem models, socio-economic indicators, fisheries and ecosystem assessment tools that can be used to examine and develop fisheries management and marine policy scenarios as well as maritime spatial planning simulations.

Various groups of end-users and stakeholders will be involved in the design, development and operation of both the Platform and the Toolbox through a series of interactive forums and workshops.

Hanson Lu

Novel assessment methods for data-poor fisheries, including non-commercial species, as well as for biodiversity and the conservation status of protected megafauna, will be used to assess the status of all ecosystem components across European Seas and test new technologies for evaluating the environmental, anthropogenic and climatic impact on ecosystems and fisheries. The novel assessment methods will be developed in consultation with stakeholders and make use of The EcoScopium.

A series of sophisticated capacity-building tools, such as online courses, documentary films, webinars and games, will be available to stakeholders through the EcoScope Academy.

By filling these knowledge gaps and developing new methods and tools, the EcoScope project will provide an effective toolbox to decision-makers and end-users that will be adaptive to their capacity, needs and data availability. The toolbox will incorporate methods for dealing with uncertainty and deep uncertainty; thus, it will promote efficient, holistic, sustainable, ecosystem-based fisheries management that will aid towards restoring fisheries sustainability and ensuring a balance between food security and healthy seas.