A mixed-methods approach to design a framework for GIS project development to manage aquatic animal health

Aquaculture is one of the fastest growing food production sectors in the world. Aquatic animal health (AAH), therefore, has been playing the lead to ensure global food security and human nutrition. However, disease outbreaks are still a major threat to the sector. In such a puzzle, responsible and effective disease surveillance and response (DSR) are essential for early detection and rapid emergency response. Nonetheless, implementation of programmes for animal health management in continuously growing, dynamic, and complex contexts such as the aquatic is still a great challenge. The management of AAH has been increasingly relying on the collection, interpretation, and communication of highly accurate geospatial information for rapid and efficient spatiotemporal data analysis and visualization. Therefore, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) appears as a natural candidate technology to support decision-making for AAH and, in fact, have proved to be a reliable tool for aquatic DSR. Nonetheless, GIS knowledge among professionals, as well as their familiarity with the full capabilities of GIS technologies, remain often inadequate in the aquatic domain. These are the gaps that justify the activities I conducted within the international cooperation project Aquae Strength, which aimed to enhance and facilitate AAH management through the implementation of advanced GIS solutions. More specifically, I contributed to the design and coordination of the exchange of knowledge among GIS and AAH experts so as to produce guidelines to develop and implement GIS projects for AAH purposes. The exploitation of a mixed-methods research approach appeared to be especially beneficial for the production of robust and evidence-based final guidelines for GIS project development that could support AAH in a tailored and structured way. By means of a literature scoping review, an opinion elicitation, and other activities involving experts, I gathered both quantitative and qualitative information that allowed the identification of knowledge, methodologies, and data gaps, as well as suggestions about key GIS planning concepts and routines to be turned into best practices for GIS project development and implementation for AAH. A mixed-methods design made it possible to obtain a more holistic and multi-faceted perspective on the “research question” (i.e., the need for a structured but tailored guidance on how to design, plan, and implement GIS projects for aquatic animal DSR), as well as a more complete picture of a possible solution. As literature data were scarce, turning to expert judgement became not only necessary but especially insightful thanks to the heterogeneity of the recruited expert panel. The opinion elicitation we conducted not only validated the findings of the prior scoping review regarding gaps and barriers to the current use of GIS in AAH but it also suggested to achieve it through a forward-thinking planning approach based on reuse and integration of principles that would optimise the exploitation of available resources. The main recommendation that emerged regarded the production of a set of guidelines describing procedures and methods for developing GIS projects. This justified and supported the following development of a final framework for planning GIS projects in the AAH domain, where the experts’ answers were used to identify key planning concepts and components that could be turned into best practices. The final framework was then applied within two case studies in two different aquatic environments allowing the evaluation of its actual applicability and accessibility, and the identification of experienced and potential benefits coming from its design and implementation, as well as challenges and limitations. It promotes the use of GIS as a natural candidate technology to tackle AAH issues in a complex, dynamic, and ever-evolving environment such as that of aquaculture globally.