The Beaufort Sea Partnership (BSP) is the primary forum for stakeholder engagement and integrated ocean management of the Beaufort Sea region. Consisting of over 54 organizations, the BSP provides a forum for all groups who have an interest in the Beaufort Sea Large Ocean Management Area (LOMA) to share information about their activities/interests. Given the volume of participants and breadth of data, a web-based platform for central storage and enhanced visualization of spatial and non-spatial information has been developed.
Pioneering ocean management in Canada, the Inuvialuit Settlement Region Online Platform (ISROP) formerly the Beaufort Sea Online Platform (BSOP) provides its members with a cloud-based environment for communication and collaboration. Aiming to improve information sharing between partners, the BSOP includes over 100 spatial layers and dynamically connects to several external platforms. Capable of conducting spatial analysis, application development, mapping, field data collection and feature editing, the ISROP is being used by Government of Canada departments, non-government organizations and Aboriginal groups. Additionally, a data sharing partnership with NOAA-AOOS has broken down international ocean management barriers within the Beaufort Sea by providing 100’s of spatial files to the BSOP. Currently, this data is used for many applications including ecosystem management of marine species in the entire Beaufort Sea region (i.e. migration patterns, critical habitat, species distribution).
