EcoScope project developed an interoperable platform, a robust decision-making toolbox , a series of online courses and a card tabletop game, a special fisheries edition of the marine spatial planning challenge simulation platform, and a mobile application and produced several other side output including a series of ecosystem models, stock and marine ecosystem assessments, socio-economic and value chain analyses, and examined management, policy and climate scenarios under uncertainty.
The EcoScope Platform is a novel, modular, interdisciplinary e-tool integrating met-ocean, biogeochemical, environmental, biological, fisheries, and socio-economic datasets, covering all European Seas, organised and homogenized into a common standard type and format. Through the EcoScope Platform, complex ecosystem functions and interrelations between abiotic-biotic and human components are revealed and their spatiotemporal variability can be assessed and visualised.
The EcoScope Toolbox , a scoring system that hosts ecosystem models, socio-economic indicators, and fisheries and ecosystem assessment tools can be used to assess fisheries and ecosystems using an array of indicators. The EcoScope Toolbox integrates two components: the Fisheries Index for Sustainable Harvesting (FISH), which tracks indicators of fishing pressure, stock status, trophic dynamics, and ecosystem overfishing and the Marine Ecosystem Scoring Index (MESSI), which incorporates biodiversity, habitat, and socio-economic factors.
EcoScope Academy, the educational pillar of the project, includes a series of online courses and sophisticated capacity building tools, such as documentary films, webinars, and games, and is freely available to scientists, decision-makers, and other stakeholders. A card tabletop game Fish n’ Ships – Aegean Sea version was developed to teach marine sustainability and ecosystem dynamics in an engaging yet scientifically robust way.
A next generation planning support system dedicated to sustainable fisheries management in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea (MSP Challenge simulation platform) was developed launching a new tool on fisheries management to help decision-makers, stakeholders, and students understand and manage the maritime (blue) economy and marine environment. MSP Challenge simulation platform is a multi-user serious/simulation game with interactive simulations in which users/players take on the role of planners and stakeholders.
A series of ecosystem ECOPATH base-models were developed in all case study areas, along with their temporal (ECOSIM) and spatio-temporal (ECOSPACE) components. Ecosystem models were performed using the EwE suite which formed the basis for testing and evaluating the various fisheries management and policy scenarios within the context of climate change.
The mobile phone application (EcoScope App) was designed as a participatory tool to engage regular citizens in marine protection interventions and serves as an open access tool for citizen science and data crowdsourcing that can be used to support scientific research and inform marine conservation programs at national and regional levels.
Overall, over 50 articles were published in international peer reviewed journals and over 100 other results were included in conference proceedings, books chapters and other dissemination activities. EcoScope organised and edited two collective volumes, two stakeholder workshops, three (internal) ecosystem modelling workshops and three stock assessment workshops and co-organised thee international conferences. It also produced two short documentary films on ecosystem based fisheries management. Finally, and perhaps most important of all, EcoScope supported (partly or fully) ten PhD theses.
