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FAO is preparing the Fisheries Global
Information System (FIGIS) aimed at providing
policy-makers with the timely, reliable strategic
information on global fishery status and trends
needed to make informed decisions about the key
challenges of sustainable development. The
information system is expected to integrate several
technically specialized sub-systems, allowing the
user to access information on biology, fishing
technology, high seas vessels records, resources,
fisheries management systems, aquaculture, products
and markets. While organized in a database, this
information will be presented in the form of fact
sheets illustrated by maps, images and statistical
graphics constructed from available time series,
and published via the Internet, on CD-ROMs and in
publications.
Key principles to FIGIS are the information
provided is sustainable, quality-controlled and
kept up-to-date. Maintenance will rely upon a
network of partners (initially Regional Fishery
Bodies and national centres of excellence)
contributing to the system according to their own
mandate. As a corollary, control of FIGIS is
decentralized - contribution and maintenance rights
are assigned to partners who are the data owners.
These partners will share certain standards and
adhere to certain rules in order to ensure the best
possible quality of data and information. It is
worth noting that the new Internet technologies
will enable systematic integration through
streamlined flows of information from national, to
regional and to global levels with no major
additional workload (except during the development
phase).
As a distributed information system, FIGIS will
allow states to fulfil their reporting obligations
according to international requirements. In that
respect, FAO has already agreed with SPC
(Secretariat of the Pacific Community),
ICCAT (Interntional Commission for the
Conservation of Atlantic Tunas), ICES
(International Council for the Exploration of the
Sea) and NAFO (Northwest Atlantic Fisheries
Organization) on the development of case
studies.
FIGIS contains a module that will eventually
provide access to all FAO fishery statistics. So
far, aquaculture, capture fishery and total fishery
production statistics, as well as fishing fleet
data, have been included. Next to be incorporated
are regional fishery statistics (i.e. CECAF and
GFCM), production and trade statistics for fishery
commodities and tuna atlas data. In contrast to
other dissemination databases, such as
FAOSTAT and FISHSTAT, FIGIS will
retrieve statistics from the working system
database and so will always present the latest
available data, which will have been screened for
quality and updated on a country-by-country
basis.
For effective fisheries information management,
it is necessary to promote and agree on standards:
thesauri with agreed vocabularies and
classifications for indexing, glossaries to ensure
definitions of terms, and shared concepts. Norms
for data sets content management are under
development, including documentation of information
quality assurance processes.
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