WIO Symphony – a tool for ecosystem-based marine spatial planning

WIO Symphony is a web tool that supports marine spatial planning in the Western Indian Ocean by assessing environmental impact from human activities. We develop the tool together – the Nairobi Convention, its ten member states and a Swedish team.

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official webpage: www.nairobiconvention.org/wio-symphony

Show, calculate, compare

The WIO Symphony web tool supports your marine spatial planning by assessing environmental impact from human activities. WIO Symphony lets you visualize data, test scenarios, and compare different ways of using the ocean.

Show data
Create maps
Calculate cumulative impact on environment
Compare planning options

The user interface gives you control of your work.

Login via the WIO Symphony page at the Nairobi Convention, if you have a login. (https://www.nairobiconvention.org/wio-symphony/)

View the data layers, such as maps of ecosystem components.

Use the diagram in the calculation report to see what is impacting what.

Draw your own areas, and edit pressures to test various scenarios of future use.

The diagram shows you the top 5 impacts, in the calculation report.

Cumulative impact is shown as heat maps, too.

Compare two scenarios with the comparison report.

Find best areas for an ocean use from a cumulative environmental impact perspective.

Work on various geographical scales, view data and impacts.

How WIO Symphony works

The WIO Symphony web tool supports your marine spatial planning by assessing environmental impact from human activities. Pressures, ecosystems and sensitivity are combined into cumulative environmental impact. Click to enlarge.

WIO Symphony is based on more than 80 maps of ecology and human activity. The tool combines pressures, ecosystems and sensitivity into cumulative environmental impact.

The results are presented as heat maps, which makes it easy to identify areas of high and low cumulative impact.They are also presented as tables and diagrams showing details for any given area. Uncertainties are highlighted too.

A similar tool was developed and used in Swedish marine spatial planning.

Watch the video Symphony – a tool for ecosystem-based marine spatial planning.

Developed for the Western Indian Ocean

The WIO Symphony project is a collaboration between the Nairobi Convention, its ten member states in East Africa and a team of Swedish institutions lead by the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management.

Together we co-develop the WIO Symphony tool for the Western Indian Ocean.

The tool is hosted in the region, available to practitioners there.

The partnership

Partners and their roles

The Nairobi Convention secretariat - ensures regional representation and links to policy

The ten member states

Somalia
Kenya
Tanzania
Mozambique
South Africa
Comoros
Madagascar
Seychelles
Mauritius
Réunion, France.

Each state has a representative in the technical working group to tailor WIO Symphony to their user needs.

Zoom image

Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management (SwAM) - leads the Swedish team

Geological Survey of Sweden (SGU) - contributes with expert knowledge on marine geology, as well as technical and analytical expertise

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) -collects and processes relevant data

University of Gothenburg (GU) - provides expert knowledge on deep sea ecology and oceanography

We consult additional experts from universities, institutions, and governments along the way.

The Symphony tool for the Western Indian Ocean

The WIO Symphony tool for the Western Indian Ocean covers 9 percent of the world ocean. The WIO Symphony project is a collaboration between the Nairobi Convention, its ten member states in East Africa and a Swedish team.

Data contributors

The development of WIO Symphony was possible also thanks to all data contributors – thank you! See the list at www.nairobiconvention.org/wio-symphony.