Ocean Country Partnership Programme: Senegal Development of the DAMCP Data Management System

JNCC co-leads the Biodiversity loss theme of the Ocean Country Partnership Programme (OCPP), a UK government-led programme under the Blue Planet Fund. For the past two years, OCPP has been supporting the Senegal Government with priority areas, including data management within the Directorate of Community-based Marine Protected Areas (DAMCP).

The Ocean Country Partnership Programme (OCPP) supports countries to:

• strengthen marine science expertise
• develop science-based policy and management tools
• create educational resources for coastal communities

This project aims to assist the DAMCP by developing a data management system for use across divisions within the department. The development aims to facilitate data storage, access and use across DAMCP, support data sharing with other government departments, and promote sustainable data management to enable effective retention and continued use of datasets. There may also be scope to include other functionalities to treat data to identify trends, and visualise data (such as data modelling, overlapping of maps, etc.)

Different data types are collected and collated by the DAMCP - physical & chemical data, biological data (species abundance/presence, species richness, etc.), habitat data, and human use data. The data may be collected by a field scientist but used or shared with other staff member to build trends, monitor effectiveness of MPA and guide decision. At present, there is a lack of consistency in data gathering and sharing within the DAMCP and the risk of lost data is a key priority the DAMCP are hoping to rectify. The aim of the data management system is to bring together collated datasets and to facilitate data sharing within the DAMCP.

In developing an effective data management solution to facilitate easy access to data required across the department, this project will support DAMCP staff in making evidence-based decisions to ensure effective protection of Senegal's environment.

The objectives of the project are:

• To create a simple, user-friendly data management and visualisation system that integrates different data types from across the division and meets the requirements summarised in the attached user research report and Section 4.
• To utilise existing and open-source software where possible.
• To work with the DAMCP's IT specialist to identify a sustainable server-based hosting solution.
• To ensure the system links with existing data systems in place where possible, promoting data sharing across government departments.
• Provide training and guidance documentation to support DAMCP staff in using the system.