Networking and Communication Successes to Date

Good Governance of Canada 's Oceans: Determiningthe Use, Value, and Potential of Marine Boundary Information (HSS #55)

Project Successes

April 2001

This project began in September 2000 and runs until February 2002. It involves 7 senior researchers and currently 7 graduate students in four universities across Canada, and several federal and provincialgovernment and private sector partners. The objectives of the project are to: a) determine the marine boundary requirements for good ocean governance; b) investigate data uncertainty with respect to the boundary information; c) develop and extend new geomatics technologies and techniques; d) develop a communications strategy and models for decision-makers. There are three case studies under investigation: a) a portion of the continental shelf boundary; b) proposed marine protected area in Musquash; c) the New Brunswick marine administrative boundary.

Networking and Communication Successes to date:

1. all team members, including partners, have been actively involved and are currently looking for ways to expand the research becauseof its recognized significance;

2. presentations have been made in 12 Canadian and American forums, including a keynote luncheon address at an offshore stakeholders workshop in Halifax- these presentationshave created a great deal of interest in the project and its implications, including potential opportunities for further funding;

3.on-going development of a website that is also creating national and international interest ( (e.g., a delegation from Russia came to UNB in December specifically to look at marine administrative boundary issue);

4.an invitation to participate on the Permanent Committee of GIS Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacific (UN) to advise on marine cadastral issues (

5. publication of one journalpaper and development of a publication plan for more co-authored papers;

6. a GEOIDE internship as the first student exchange at the Centre for Governance;

7. invitation to hold a one day workshop on the project at the Digital Earth Conference;

8. development underway for an on-line real time demonstration of the Musquash case study and dataset integration issues for the June 2001 GEOIDE conference.

Research Successes:

1. extensive preparation for the Musquash fieldwork, involving not only 5 GEOIDE graduate students from 2 universities, but also actively involving two UNB undergraduate classes in planning and carrying out the data collection.,processing, and ground truthing activities in May 2001 - (data collection is being funded separately);

2.a preliminary report to Service New Brunswick on legal precedentsfor marine administrative boundaries (we have to await the decision on the Nova Scotia/Newfoundland boundary due in May 2001 before completion of the legal research);

3. creation of a working group with government and industry to test datasets and software for the Musquash case study - the first integration has been achieved;

4.student training through our industrial partner on high end software to be used and expanded during the project for all three case studies;

5. preparation of a PhD proposal which included developing models to look at social-cultural and legal uncertainty as well as traditional data uncertainty;

6. a growing awareness among the research team, students, and partners of:

a) the complexity of the issues being raised as we put data sets together;

b) the value of the interdisciplinaryapproach to research.

We have a highly motivated team that will be devoted almost entirely to the GEOIDE project over the summer months and we are actively looking for research support from a number of sources to extend the project. NRCan has committed $100,000 from its share of GEOIDE support to the project already.

Yours sincerely

Dr. Sue Nichols

Project Team Leader

University of New Brunswick