SAFI

“Supporting Our Aquaculture and Fisheries Industries”

The full potential of information hidden in Earth Observation data is currently under-utilized, with intermediaries and tailor-made decision support tools needed to extract the information and deliver it in usable forms. The SAFI project is to explore the use of Earth Observation resources for such tailored support of the fisheries and aquaculture industries in marine and coastal regions. The designed service, based on the added value brought by a network SME’s and research centers, is adapted to each category of targeted user and aims to reach the following goals by making the best use of emerging EO products:

1. Develop a service to assist aquaculture deployment (optimization of cages location w.r.t to environmental and ecological context) and environmental monitoring during operations,
2. Develop a service to support fisheries by providing indicators of recruitment, abundance, and shell/fish locations (and their variability due to climate change),
3. Set up a network of SME’s at different levels of expertise (and EO awareness) required by the service – and to build consistent and marketable offer,
4. Evaluate the capacity to export the service beyond the EU and acceptance of this service,
5. Foster the user of sentinel 2 and sentinel 3 data

The project is leading to the development and evaluation of an integrated web-GiS-based Decision Support Service, disseminating the EO-derived ecological indicators to the various users concerned (industrial, public administrations in charge of fishery/aquaculture planning, EO service providers, the general public) This is all founded on a bedrock of high-level EO data processing.

MaREI is responsible for the communications and training activities within the project. The Centre is also conducting some exploratory EO data processing, generating novel indicators to support further investigations for more enhanced decision support and forecasting.

For further information on the SAFI initiative and MaREI’s contributions, please contact Rory Scarrott