Synthèse bibliographique relative à la notion d'indicateur dans le contexte de la Directive Cadre Stratégie pour le Milieu Marin (DCSMM)
Year: 2015
Type: report
Abstract: Stakeholders of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) need scientific and technical support to assess ecological status of marine waters and to adopt management actions to achieve the objective of the directive, i.e. “to achieve or to maintain good environmental status in the [European] marine environment by the year 2020 at the latest”. This support involves especially the development of indicators. Studies about the concept of indicator exist, in particular since the implementation of legislations such as the Water Framework Directive (WFD) in Europe. Indeed, they provide a significant source of reports and scientific papers, representing essential information for the implementation of the MSFD. However, the generic nature of the concept of indicator and the multiplicity of proposed frameworks and steps of development led to the definition of a dense and sometimes redundant vocabulary as well as focused or synthesised and then incomplete processes, which overlap in part or in totality. It follows that the use of these documents is not easy in an operating context. This report seeks to make a state of the art about the concept of indicator, with the aim of providing support for the development of indicators, particularly in the framework of the MSFD. The realized synthesis allowed to propose an operational and generic procedure for the construction of indicators, which is composed of the following three stages: (i) identification of the question of interest and of its components; (ii) development of the indicator (i.e. vocabulary, expected qualities, candidates, selection et aggregation); (iii) evaluation and the feedback, i.e. the use of the indicator to answer to the question of interest and the use of newly acquired knowledge to update the various components (e.g. question, indicator) during the next identification – development - assessment cycle. In the framework of the MSFD, a proposition is done to define a common vocabulary about the concept of indicator and a lot of work remains to obtain a set of valid indicators.
Authors: Brun, Melanie, Soudant, Dominique
Institution: Ifremer
Language: English
Subfield: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Life below water
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W52290047