Ecosystem-based marine spatial planning assessment tool video tutorial

Aiming at promoting the capacity building of competent authorities, scientists and consultants, a novel tool is proposed for assessing the alignment of marine spatial planning processes with ecosystem-based approach principles and to guide its operationalization.

The EB-MSP assessment tool is developed with the ambition of providing a fit-for-purpose tool to overcome the ecosystem-based marine spatial planning implementation barriers reported by experts and managers.

The EB-MSP assessment tool is designed to apply to any spatial plan, regardless of its stage of development: assessment of existing plans, plans in progress; or different national plans in a transboundary region.

The EB-MSP tool can be accessed at https://aztidata.es/EB-MSP

The EB-MSP assessment tool leads users through a step-by-step procedure for evaluating a specific plan.

Upon first access, the user must register. This way, the users can conduct multiple assessments in a single session or different sessions, and can retrieve the information from previous sessions.

The evaluation can be conducted by documenting the actions adopted during the planning process stages, or by examining how ecosystem-based marine spatial planning cross-cutting topics, have been incorporated into the plan.

The user has to provide information about 130 statements that reflect the actions or tasks adopted during the planning process.

For each action, six complementary fields of information have to be provided by the user:

1.            the degree of implementation of the action;
2.            the relevance of the action for the assessed planning site;
3.           the main source of knowledge base supporting the action;
4.           the respondent's confidence;
5.           approaches, tools and methods implemented; and
6.           justification of the responses

Once the assessment is performed, the results are displayed as dynamic graphs that can be downloaded.

The responses are also stored in a table, which can be downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet.