Final Report of the Working Group on Integrated Assessments of the North Sea (WGINOSE)

The Working Group on Integrated Assessments of the North Sea (WGINOSE) met in ICES, Copenhagen, between 14 and 18 March 2016. The meeting was chaired by An-drew Kenny (UK). There were six participants (two by Skype) representing three na-tions (Annex 1).An important task of the group, following from the conclusions of the group last year, was to identify appropriate spatial scales (strata) to apply the Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (IEA) methods including the development of Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) to support ecosystem advice.The identification of appropriate spatial scales for assessment requires the spatial op-timization of the data to ensure the best spatial fit between, human activities, pressures, and ecological processes, which drive ecosystem state changes due to natural causes while taking into consideration spatial gradients in pressures arising from human ac-tivities (Section 5).