Sarah Carr's blog

By Sarah Carr

In December 2012-January 2013, the EBM Tools Network and OpenChannels conducted a survey of MSP practitioners worldwide to learn what tools they are using in the field and how well those tools are working.  We’ve shared many results of this survey in preceding blog posts.  For this final installment, we would like to share some of the general wisdom our survey respondents have gained over time about using tools. When asked about tool-related lessons they have learned, respondents emphasized four areas:

By Sarah Carr

In December 2012-January 2013, the EBM Tools Network and OpenChannels conducted a survey of MSP practitioners worldwide to learn what tools practitioners are actually using in the field and how well those tools are working. 91 practitioners reported using one or more tools for an MSP process or processes, and they cited a wide range of benefits of using tools. Some of the most commonly-cited benefits of using tools are that the tools:

By Sarah Carr

Survey respondents were asked to provide some identifying information about their MSP projects, and from this information, we can get an idea where a large number MSP projects (> 100) are occurring. (Note: These results do NOT mean that MSP projects are not occurring in other locations, and they may not be representative of the geographic distribution of MSP projects as a whole.) Since the vast majority of responses were associated with a specific country or countries, we grouped results by continent where the project countries are located with the exception of a project in the Southern Ocean.

By Sarah Carr

In our first blog, we reported on the tools that appear to be used most often for Marine Spatial Planning (e.g. GIS, Marxan, MarineMap, and SeaSketch). But our respondents who reported using tools (91 of the 124 total respondents) also named a vast array of other tools that are being used, or have been used, in MSP processes.

In this installment, we characterize and give examples of these “other tools” (tools reported as being used by one or two respondents) because they form a treasure trove of information and inspiration for MSP projects which are beginning to look at tools.

By Sarah Carr

As we reported in our first blog, 33 of our 124 respondents who completed the survey (27%) reported that they are NOT using tools for their MSP process. We asked them why to get a feel for the reasons behind that.

Some reasons why respondents reported not using tools:

By Sarah Carr

We’ve seen lists and spreadsheets and guides on tools for marine spatial planning, but which tools are people actually using for their marine spatial planning (MSP) processes? To help get some real-life skinny on this, the EBM Tools Network and OpenChannels solicited their communities (totaling 10,000 coastal-marine conservation and resource management types from all sorts of organizations and places) as well as folks involved in 25 sure-fire MSP processes from around the world (from a list compiled by Rhode Island Sea Grant in 2012). To learn about the full array of tools people are using, we allowed surveyees to self-define tools.