Study Group on Management of Integrated Data [SGMID]

SGMID reviewed existing central databases at ICES and distributed databases within the ICES community, as well as data policies and experiences with the setup of integrated databases. It became apparent that there is an urgent need for the development of additional databases within ICES, inter alia as a prerequisite to develop an integrated advice for ICES clients. SGMID made a number of recommendations for future actions. Amongst these the group recommends that central databases physically located at ICES should only be developed where necessary (i.e. a database for the handling of catch-at-age and other primary fish stock assessment input data), while existing databases (such as survey databases) should be kept distributed in order to reduce the development effort. ICES should, however, take the lead in defining standards for these distributed databases and should become the focal point for their integration. ICES should, wherever possible, use integration tools already available rather than developing new tools. SGMID will focus on these technical solutions during its next meeting. SGMID also favoured open accessibility of ICES data rather than restricted access