National Aquatic Biodiversity Information System (NABIS)

25 August 2005

Tags: productivity, economy, report, government

This case study has been taken from the Spatial Information in the New Zealand Economy - Realising Productivity Gains report, August 2009.

In 2001, the Ministry of Fisheries (MFish) developed a geospatial data reporting management tool, NABIS (National Aquatic Biodiversity Information System) which allows users to create a base map of an area of interest, with GIS layers depicting information including biological distributions for finfish and invertebrates, fishery management areas, and commercial catch information. Commercial fishers can also use the system to plot the locations of their fishing tracks on the water by importing recorded latitude and longitude information. Three full time equivalent staff focus on managing and developing NABIS within MFish.

In May 2008, 2,000 NABIS users were surveyed to inform the development of the second generation NABIS system. The survey found that the system is used by a mixture of students, scientists, analysts and researchers. Forty survey respondents assessed that NABIS improves their productivity by an average of 9 per cent, equivalent in total to an estimated 3.6 full time positions. Across the 2000 NABIS survey respondents this would be equivalent to 180 FTE. The total number of NABIS users is unknown but it is highly likely that the value of these gains already outweighs the estimated cost of developing the second generation NABIS system of around $1,500,000.

A map generated to show commercial catch of orange roughy by bottom trawl in October 2007 in quota management area 15 is outlined in Figure 11.

Figure 11: NABIS - example of orange roughy catch in quota management area15