PROJECT No: 961620	ACRONYM: SIMES
TARGET MARKETS: The Information System that will be developed will be put freely at the disposal of all concerned Institutions (see exploitation plan). No commercial use will be done of this first release. It will be used by Environmental and socio-economic observatories. TECHNOLOGIES: Data bases (object oriented or relational data base management systems), Information Processing (Computer Vision, Statistical models), knowledge representation techniques (Artificial Intelligence, Multi-Agents systems), Network management and Web servers (Multimedia knowledge bases, Web mirror).
EXPLOITABLE RESULTS: The result of the project will be a generic information system adapted to environmental and socio-economic observatories in sub-Saharan Africa and two pilot applications of this system : Monitoring systems for continental fisheries (Mali) and hydro-climatic observatory (Senegal). In a first step the generic system (SIMES) will be installed in ESP (Dakar), ESI (Burkina Faso) and Dschang University (Cameroon), and accessible via Internet by all partners in Africa, as well as the Center for Ecological Surveillance (Dakar), CIRAD centers (Dakar, Abidjan, Ouagadougou), and CILSS (Bamako). In a second step the system will be put at the disposal of other users via Internet principally the partners of AFRICAGIS program. The two first pilot applicative systems will be made accessible on Internet to a list of persons chosen by the Institutions respectively concerned by these systems. The use of these new tools within the observatories should provide the authorities with better information (accuracy, relevance, updating...) .
ANTICIPATED OR DEMONSTRATED BENEFITS: In our opinion, most of the problems faced by the observatories come mainly from an insufficient communication between researchers of various fields and between data providers and data users. SIMES will greatly enhance this communication . In the exploitation phase, a particular focus will be put on the establishment of a methodology and training program for the setting up and operation of observatories of the dynamic and use of natural resources .
APPLICATION AND ASSESSMENT OF RESULTS: Besides the implementation of the generic system, two specific pilot operations will be carried out : Fishing monitoring observatory in the central delta of the Niger river (Mopti region, Mali) Hydro-climatic observatory of the Senegal river region (Saint Louis, Senegal). The outcome of the first pilot operation will be to contribute to the allocation of fishing areas and to the definition of fishing gears schedule for the fishing communities of the region. The outcome of the second pilot operation will be to contribute to development planning in the river Senegal valley The main measurable training outcome of the project will be the theses (8-12) passed by students in the frame of SIMES. Regular meetings will be held and progress reports produced every six months along with demonstrations for each workpackage. Several indicators will be used throughout the project to assess its progress, among which the relevance of the selected environmental and socio-economic indicators and the relevance of the selected tools and algorithms for the indicators monitoring.
INNOVATIVE ASPECTS: We will adapt the most recent and sophisticated Information System tools to the specific environment problems of the African subsaharian countries in order to provide an operational system. Such a system does not yet exist. The innovation will therefore rely mainly upon the applicative purpose of the project.