Course outline & material for ICES VMStools course (25-29 June 2012)

Lectures

1. A brief introduction to the use of R, functions, scripting and installing libraries. Doug - 1h
2. VMS data – advantages, limitations, data confidentiality issues. Doug - 1h
3. EU logbook data – advantages, limitations, data confidentiality issues. Doug - 1h
4. EU logbook data metier analyses based on species composition of landings. Clara / Francois - 2h
5. Combining VMS and logbook data –why it is important? Niels / Francois - 1.5h
6. Standardising VMS and logbook analyses for populating pan European databases, e.g FishFrame. Niels - 1h
7. Indicators – what do they tell us? Doug - 1h
8. Introduction to spatial statistics – shapefiles, points, lines, polygons, map projections, and data-storage. Doug - 2h
9. Exploring the connection between fishing effort and other possibly explanatory variables (e.g. depth, primary production, temperature, wind speed). Niels - 2h

Practicals

1. Getting the VMS and logbook data into R. Doug - 2h (getting started)
2. Cleaning and processing the VMS and logbook data, and accounting for potential problems. Niels - 2h
3. Linking VMS and logbook data and exploring the benefits. Francois / Niels - 2h
4. How to link VMS, logbook data to ‘spatial’ grids. Doug - 2h
5. Interpolation methods for VMS tracks. Niels - 2h
6. Calculating indicators (eg. Percentage area trawled) at different spatial scales. Doug - 2h
7. Plotting, exporting to GIS and FishFrame. Doug - 2h
8. How to link VMS data with other spatial datasets. Niels - 2h
9. Play with your own data. Both - 2h

Time schedule

Monday morning: Lecture 1 & Practical 1.

Monday afternoon: Lecture 2 + 3 & Practical 2.

Tuesday morning: Lecture 4 + 5 & Practical 3.

Tuesday afternoon: Practical 4 + 5.

Wednesday morning: Lecture 6 & Practical 7

Wednesday afternoon: Lecture 7 & Practical 6

Thursday morning: Lecture 8 & Practical 7

Thursday afternoon: Lecture 9 & Practical 8

Friday morning + afternoon: Play with own data