The UK marine ecosystem modelling community is working with the MSCC and MASTS to develop a five year strategy for ecosystem modelling. To realise the potential of UK ecosystem modelling, we have the following vision:
“To deliver world-class ecosystem modelling that supports our understanding, use, and management of the marine environment through impact on policy and regulatory decision making.”
To achieve this vision, the UK ecosystem modelling community needs to adopt 5 core principles:
- Maximise policy and regulatory impact – ensure policy makers know where and how ecosystem models can be used, and maximise the impact of existing models on policy and regulatory decisions.
- Build multidisciplinary communities – build multidisciplinary communities of policy makers, observationalists, modellers, data scientists, and socio-economists. These will speak a common language, have regular contact, share new policy requirements, and co-deliver ecosystem modelling.
- Deliver novel policy-relevant science through ecosystem modelling – maintain the UK at the forefront of ecosystem model development, horizon scan new science to maximise pull through of new techniques, and put in place programmes to fill existing knowledge gaps that could be addressed using models.
- Ensure quality and availability of model-derived products – define and employ rigorous quality standards to satisfy legal challenge in policy and regulatory decisions, and ensure that model-derived products are available and robust.
- Produce people with the right skills – assess existing UK ecosystem-modelling capacity and develop training programmes for new personnel with the right skills to ensure that the utility of ecosystem modelling is optimised in future.
Image: ERSEM schematic
