Evidence Sharing Platform Trial Report and Recommendations
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Westcountry Rivers Trust Evidence Sharing Platform Trial Report and recommendations March 2016 The Evidence Sharing Platform trial is funded by the Defra Catchment Partnership Fund and the EU WaterLIFE programme Evidence Sharing Platform The Evidence Sharing Platform Project aimed to test online platforms to facilitate multi-way information sharing within the Environment Agency and between EA and the rest of the CaBA partnerships. In addition, through workshops and discussions, the Task & Finish Group established protocols, recommendations and guidance to enable community groups to more effectively input to River Basin Management Planning, an area where the EA and Defra have previously been taken to judicial review. Sharing of near real-time field work and monitoring plans to enable better coordination between CaBA partners will allow everyone involved to collaboratively deliver the updated river basin management plan in the most efficent fashion. Executive Summary In 2014/15 a number of organisations came together to trial the use of an online collaboration platform for increasing transparency of information sharing between partners involved in the Catchment Based Approach. The trial was part funded by the Catchment Partnership Fund, with match funding and time in kind from the Environment Agency, The Rivers Trust, Westcountry Rivers Trust, Ribble Rivers Trust and the Freshwater Biological Association. The Evidence Sharing Platform (ESP) Trial was set up to increase transparency and improve information sharing between all parties involved in the Catchment Based Approach (CaBA), and to ensure that local catchment plans and River Basin Management Plans are informed by the best available evidence. This report sets out the aims and objectives, technical issues encountered, solutions developed and recommendations for other CaBA partnerships wishing to adopt a similar approach. It is planned to continue the trial and embed the systems within the CaBA process in the two trial areas, the first was the Ribble management catchment, and the second area was within the south West RBD across several management catchments. The report sets out options and next steps to roll out this approach more widely. In recent years there have been significant improvements in the availability of environmental data to support the Catchment Based Approach, including national data sharing agreements between the Rivers Trust and the Environment Agency, the formation of a Catchment Data User Group to help steer the catchment management community’s licensing and sharing of data and the development of tools to help interpret, visualise and incorporate data into catchment management planning. Many of these tools, such as the EA’s Catchment Data Explorer, DataShare (aka Geostore), the Rivers Trusts Catchment Mapping Portal and the CaBA GIS Data Package, present nationally available datasets to the CaBA community. There was still a need however for a platform to share bespoke local information being generated by CaBA partnerships and EA detailed monitoring datasets which are not available nationally. A full list of the datasets identified as useful by each partnership is available in annex 2. The Catchment Based Approach (CaBA) is a community-led approach introduced by Defra, which engages people and groups from across society to help improve our precious water environments. The CaBA embeds collaborative working at a river catchment scale to deliver cross cutting improvements to our water environments. Community partnerships, bringing local knowledge and expertise, are active in each of the 89 Water Framework Directive catchments across England, including those cross border with Wales. More than 1500 organisations are engaged with CaBA nationwide including NGOs, Water Companies, Local Authorities, Government Agencies, Landowners, Angling Clubs, Farmer Representative Bodies, Academia and Local Businesses. During cycle 1 the Environment Agency passed information out to external partners concerning the river basin management plans, however our deliver partners were very critical of the lack of external evidence used to deliver the cycle 1 plans. The ESP will pass information from the EA out to CaBA partnerships as we did in cycle 1 but will in addition allow us to gather external evidence from partners to ensure that the plans are based on all available information. If rolled out to all CaBA partnerships The Evidence Sharing Platform will potentially allow everyone involved in the partnership to see all of the evidence being used and will thus aid transparency in the decision making processes. The Evidence Sharing Platform brings people together online to share and discuss evidence and information and makes it easier for partnerships to incorporate each other’s information into the CaBA decision-making processes. Contents Evidence Sharing Platform .................................................................................................................. 2 Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................. 3 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................................... 5 Aims and Objectives ............................................................................................................................................. 6 The Trial ................................................................................................................................................................ 7 Task & Finish Group members: ........................................................................................................................ 7 Case Studies.......................................................................................................................................................... 8 Tidal Ribble, Pendle Hill Landscape Partnership, and Long Preston Flood Plain Project................................. 8 South-west ..................................................................................................................................................... 10 Conclusions ......................................................................................................................................................... 11 Roll-out Options, Costs and Recommendations ................................................................................................ 13 Structure ......................................................................................................................................................... 13 Geographical referencing ............................................................................................................................... 14 Future Options ............................................................................................................................................... 14 Funding Possibilities ....................................................................................................................................... 15 Annex 1 How to setup a SharePoint Evidence Sharing Platform (with time estimates for set up and ongoing support) .............................................................................................................................................................. 16 Annex 2 ............................................................................................................................................................... 17 Evidence Types and Case Studies to Test ....................................................................................................... 17 Ribble .......................................................................................................................................................... 17 Westcountry RT .......................................................................................................................................... 20 Other third party datasets identified by CABA partners ............................................................................ 22 Annex 3 Metadata formats ................................................................................................................................ 23 Agricultural and Environmental Data Archive................................................................................................ 23 Annex 4 Data sharing and licencing ................................................................................................................... 25 EA data sharing “open data” .......................................................................................................................... 25 CaBA data sharing .......................................................................................................................................... 25 CaBA licence for data and information supplied via the data sharing platform to the Environment Agency ....................................................................................................................................................... 25 You are free to: ......................................................................................................................................... 25 Under the following terms: .....................................................................................................................