OSS2015

Context

 Our respective FP7 projects seek and are required to be informed by user's requirements. Understanding requirements of users can be a difficult task as potential users have been asked to respond to many questionnaires on their needs or to participate in a number of workshops. OSS2015 see some benefits in mutualising our efforts with other FP7 projects to obtain a better evidence base on users' needs. This workshop is an opportunity to explore the complementarities between our needs and the synergies in taking forward our respective work programme.

A way to explore what user's needs may be to start with identifying issues faced by the sectors of activity dependent on the ocean (e.g. fisheries) or affected by features of the coastal see (e.g. public health) and take stock of the existing evidence – and draw insights on their needs. Then we can try to ascertain how our various work programmes may address the issues of these sectors of activity in part or in full and in the immediate or in a long future. We propose to adopt this approach in this workshop with Frontier Economics, who in the OSS2015 is working on evaluating the socio-economic impacts of our project.

Goals of the workshop

The workshop seeks to

1. Establish the current understanding of what users require in terms of biogeochemical products;
2. Establish what available evidence on such needs is;
3. Establish how best to gather additional evidence/info on users' requirements
4. Establish the contribution that each project is aiming to make to the development of products/ services/ applications that will respond to the identified/ prospective user needs
5. Explore the scope for working together looking forward

The goal of this workshop is to bring together a number of (FP7) projects working on biological and chemical aspects of the ocean to investigate where complementarities exist and synergies may take place in terms of products being generated and service offering. Socioeconomic benefits of these services will also be explored. Moreover, key national and European user agencies are invited to attend to provide their experiences and needs with regard to ocean biogeochemical products and services.