Data interoperability for fisheries statistics

Aymen CHAREFFood and Agriculture Organization of the UN

aymen.cahref@fao.org

9th RDA Plenary meeting Working Group in Fisheries Interoperability

Barcelone, 6th April 2017

Outlines

RDA 9th Plenary, April 2017, Barcelona, Spain

Scope and definition

CWP context and standards

Reference data Data Structure Defintion

Harmonization

Management and governance

Transportation layerSDMX

UN CEFACT/FLUX

Perspectives of RDA WG and BlueBRIDGE

Scope and Definition

Interoperability covers the interaction of entities at various levels including:

Organisational level, i.e. business goals and processes

Semantic level, i.e the exchange data including its contextual information

Technical level, i.e. the heterogeneity in technology supporting the operation of every single entity involved including the communication channel and the information exchanged through it

In the context of fisheries statistics data, interoperability is driven by countries, regional bodies and organizations to improve data exchange following standards for reference data, formats, procedures and tools.

CWP Coordinating Working Party

Coordinating Working Party on Fishery Statistics (since 1960) provides a mechanism to coordinate fishery statistical programmes of 19 regional fishery bodies and other intergovernemental organizations with a remit for fishery statistics.

Examples from Handbook of Fishery Statistical Standards:• Major Fishing Areas for Statistical Purposes• The ASFIS (Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Information System) list of species• International Standard Statistical classifications for Fishing Gears (ISSCFG rev1.0)• International Standard Statistical Classification of Fishery Vessels By Vessel Types (ISSCFV)

CWP Task Groups

• Task Group on Reference data harmonization for capture fisheries and aquaculture statistics

Among main objectives: Proposal for a global data structure including a mechanism for harmonization/mappings; and guidelines for structure extensions.

• In the context of reference Geographic data, a GIS group is tasked to recommend grid reporting systems, their codification, and format (Emmanuel Blondel next presentation)

Reference data - Data Structure Definition (DSD) DSD for Global Capture ProductionOrder Concept_id Role/Type Codelist_id Codelist_Code_id Description/reference

A COUNTRY Dimension CL_FI_COUNTRY_GROUPS UN_CODE Country codeB FISHING_AREA Dimension CL_FI_AREA_GROUPS CODE FAO major catch areasC SPECIES Dimension CL_FI_SPECIES_GROUPS 3ALPHA_CODE ASFIS speciesD YEAR Time Dimension Reference yearE QUANTITY Primary measure Quantity of productionF SYMBOL Attribute CL_FI_SYMBOL CODE FAO standard symbolsG UNIT Attribute CL_FI_UNIT CODE Quantity unit

The DSD and the related Code Lists will be publicly available

Reference data harmonization

For classification and mapping at national, regional and global levels Use case: Harmonization of coding system used by Tuna RFMOs

The service include a framework for managing the codelists’ updates and their dissemination; i.e in the context of Tuna Atlas: mapper tool with user-friendly interface to map codes of gears, flags, species with standard sets of codelists

Reference data harmonization - Mapping Solution

Bionym tool: a flexible workflow approach to taxon name matchingThis tool is based on COMET as a Concept Matching Engine and Tool Use case: Mapping between ASFIS and WORMS

This tool offers a workflow that provide fuzzy search capabilities (both for scientific names and for vernacular names) to be embedded in the fishery web pages and possibly reused in different contexts.

Never mind the small print.

Step 1: Select your data

Step 2: Compose the matching

process. This relies on

infrastructure resources

Step 3: review results. This can be

private and ‘for your eyes only’, or

public.

Data management and governance

In the workflow of mapping between classifications/Code List, main considerations are:

What are the Codes/lists to map, who manages them, how frequent, what is their size, how dynamic are they, who needs them…?

Traceability of data from source of truth/originator to end-user

Transportation Layer - SDMX

Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange

An international cooperation initiative since 2008 aimed at developing and employing more efficient processes for exchange and sharing of statistical data and metadata among international organizations and their member countries.

The SDMX initiative is sponsored by a set of institutions (UN, IMF, WB, OECD,..)

Transportation Layer - SDMX

SEIF initiative - SDMX for Eurostat, ICES and FAO since 2009

Publish Catch DSD is part of EU legislation for the catch reporting

Publication of SDMX artefacts in a registry: e.g Code lists, Concept schemes and DSDs (Data Structure Definition)

- for science data (e.g. observer system data)

- for catch documentation schemes

- for global catch reporting

It offers the capability to manage within a registry: the originator (agency), the versioning, the maintenance of SDMX artefacts

Tabular Data Management Service and SDMX, Current status

Final deployment

Transportation layer - FLUXFisheries Language for Universal eXchange aims at defining a universal and efficient data exchange "language" compatible with regulations and international requirements. It is formulated according to the UN/CEFACT standards

FLUX provides a harmonized message standard that allows Fishery Management Organizations (FMOs), control and enforcement authorities to automatically access the electronic data from fishing vessels, such as vessel and trip identification, fishing operations (daily catch or haul-by-haul) or fishing data (catch area, species and quantity, date and time,..)

During the last 27th UN/CEFACT Forum it has been agreed on its importance as a standardized tool to exchange fisheries information in an effective, transparent and efficient manner. A FLUX User Community was also set up to exchange best practices and lessons learned.

Transportation layer - FLUX

FLUX is based on web technology. Applicable technical terms are XML (eXtended Markup Language), XSD (XML Schema Definition), WSDL (Web Services Description Language), SOA (Services Oriented Architecture)…

Recommend the use of and provide support to the implementation and best practices to comply with FLUX standards

RDA WG and BlueBRIDGE project

The RDA WG, supported by the Blue Bridge project, is an overarching initiative that covers:

Harmonization and design of global reference data as single-source-of-truth for international standard classifications

Formulation of data and metadata structures to facilitate interoperability between organizations (e.g WECAFC, TunaRFMOs, ICES,..)

Support and apply common standards and formats of data exchange to maximize value of data and assist in adoption of tools and facilities (e.g iMarine VREs)

Thank you