BENEFIT

SADC Marine Fisheries and Environmental Metadata Directory. This directory is being developed by the SADC Regional Fisheries Information Systems (RFIS) Project through support to the Benguela Environment Fisheries Interaction and Training (BENEFIT) Programme.

The directory is being populated with metadata descriptions for fisheries and environmental datasets from the SADC coastal states. The directory has been developed to encourage regional scientists to produce metadata descriptions for their datasets.

Information about the project can be found on the BENEFIT Data Management webpage: http://www.benefit.org.na/datamgmt.html

The systems are available in all institutes but nobody is yet using them for BENEFIT data - national data sets have been documented (about 50-60 DIFS) but not regional (BENEFIT). Another approach has been taken - it is now official BENEFIT policy to write metadata and a campaign will be launched soon to get them to do it.

SADC have employed a full time co-ordinator for this project – Richard Aukland. As the project is progressing he is training up a local successor.  Each of the three countries also has a data contact – details found on BENEFIT website.