Swiss National Science Fondation (SNSF), SCOPES Joint Research Project

http://www.snf.ch/E/international/europe/scopes/Pages/default.aspx

Wild fish stocks are being rapidly depleted, and mariculture – cultivating marine organisms in a controlled environment – can provide an alternative source of seafood. Worldwide mariculture fish production is rapidly growing, and developing mariculture is one of Croatia's strategic goals. Achieving this goal requires minimizing production costs and environmental impacts of mariculture.

The aim of the UKF project FiMDEB was to create a model relating feeding to fish growth, and use it to investigate how common feeding scenarios could be improved. The model was to be based on Dynamic Energy Budget theory of metabolic organization, which describes how organisms acquire and partition energy. Since fish feed constitutes  approximately 50% of operational costs of mariculture, any savings in fish feed can lead to substantial savings in production costs.

Application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has been recognized worldwide through environmental monitoring and risk management in the case of natural hazards, industrial accidents and dangerous influence of energy and traffic systems (Environmental Informatics). Of special interest are ICT-based in-situ measurement systems and Monitoring of the Environment based on networking of sensors and communication systems. Our research is interdisciplinary and belongs to these strategic directions. The main goals of our project concern development of specialized information systems (IS), Web applications for temporal and spatial presentations and services necessary to provide the efficient management of complex data and processes in investigations of the water quality, natural and anthropogenic pollution sources, the risk assessment and particularly the influence of river traffic on the waterways.