Duration: 2025-2027
Lead organization: Technical University of Denmark - DTU
ICES contacts:
Vaishav Soni, Data Scientist
Lise Cronne-Grigorov, Professional Projects Officer
The IMBUS project will develop standardized and easily accessible tools that allow a better use of bottom trawl survey data collected under the umbrella of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES).
Its two main objectives are to improve quality control of data collection process on board of bottom-trawl survey vessels, and access to bottom-trawl survey data for different purposes and user groups. IMBUS will expand the use of conventional fisheries independent data collection through surveys to cover climate change and management issues (including an ecosystem approach to fisheries), in addition to fisheries catch advice.
ICES plays a central role in the IMBUS project by ensuring the long-term sustainability, accessibility, and operational use of survey data and project outputs.
As leader of Work Package 5, ICES builds on its custodianship of the DATRAS database to strengthen data quality assurance, version control, and reproducibility through the IMBUS–DATRAS–GitHub repository. ICES ensures that standardized data products, R tools, and full documentation are integrated into the ICES Data Centre and made available as FAIR, open-access resources.
In addition, interactive Shiny applications developed within IMBUS will be hosted on the ICES public Shiny server, allowing users to visualize spatial distributions, abundance indices, and survey-based indicators.
Through collaboration with ICES expert groups and assessment groups, IMBUS outputs will be reviewed and incorporated into advisory workflows, ensuring long-term sustainability and practical use of survey data for fisheries management, ecosystem assessment, and policy support.
The project IMBUS has received funding from the European Union under the European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund (EMFAF), Grant Agreement No. 101241455.
