AquaPort Projects: BC Network for Sustainable Seafood Innovation Partnership

Anchoring knowledge mobilization and networking for a research consortium

AquaPort is involved with a research consortium being developed in British Columbia, the Sustainable Seafood Innovation Partnership (SSIP). The SSIP is a partnership between six leading aquaculture research institutions in BC: the Malaspina Institute for Coastal Research (ICR), the Malaspina Centre for Shellfish Research (CSR), the DFO/UBC Centre for Aquaculture and Environmental Research (CAER), the BC Centre for Aquatic Health Sciences (CAHS), the Pacific Sustainable Ecological Aquaculture Laboratory (Pacific SEA Lab), and AquaPort.ca – the knowledge exchange system for aquaculture.

The role of AquaPort.ca is to provide the web infrastructure for knowledge exchange and collaboration between these research centres and the people and organizations that need to use and apply the knowledge generated through research and innovation projects. AquaPort will explore the application of new tools for research collaboration, community participation, and information display and dissemination.

Combining data from different sources and displaying it in new ways and integrating it into new tools - a phenomenon known as a “mashup” – is providing new opportunities for discovery and commerce.

For example, combining data about events in aquaculture and related sectors with cartographic data would mean that one could search, access, register, connect and otherwise interact through a map interface. In the case of research projects, one could connect with investigators, collaborators, field sites, project information, and other forms of data through a map interface.

To give a little flavour to this, the SSIP has created a pilot presence in Google Earth, enabling the visitor to fly from site to site and access information from each location.

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The Partnership is a consortium of

• Malaspina Institute for Coastal Research (ICR)
• Malaspina Centre for Shellfish Research (CSR)
• DFO/UBC Centre for Aquaculture and Environmental Research (CAER)
• BC Centre for Aquatic Health Sciences (CAHS)
• Pacific Sustainable Ecological Aquaculture Laboratory (Pacific SEA Lab)
• AquaPort.ca – the online knowledge exchange system for aquaculture

This project has been supported in part by funds from AquaNet, the Network of Centres of Excellence for Aquaculture.