IMarine - Data e-Infrastructure Initiative for Fisheries Management and Conservation of Marine Living Resources. 2.nd Project Periodic Report, from 1 September 2012 to 30 June 2013

iMarine is an initiative aimed at supporting the implementation of the Ecosystem Approach (EA) to fisheries management and the conservation of living marine resources. To achieve its objectives, iMarine provides a data e-infrastructure that facilitates open access and the sharing of a multitude of data, collaborative analysis, processing and mining processing, as well as the publication and diffusion of newly generated knowledge. This is a complex process because it requires coordination with many actors and initiatives across different scientific and operational domains. It also needs to tackle data heterogeneity while relying on a multitude of resources and technologies, some of which are not yet ripe or powerful enough to meet the given requirements. One of the main challenges that iMarine aims to address is data heterogeneity. This means not only tackling data from different disciplines and in different formats, but also dealing with different information and tools that do not belong to any specific community.