Quality Assurance
Objectives
The objectives of the Quality Assurance (QA) of Biodiversity Studies are to:
- construct and apply a QA framework for the MarBEF initiative to ensure that all activities conform with
the highest standards for the conduct of marine research in European waters.
- advise on the production of standard procedures so that recommendations under MarBEF for
adoption of new approaches by the wider marine science community are, from the outset,
accompanied by guidance on quality assurance of the end-products.
- establish external collaborative links to ensure that QA initiatives under MarBEF are known to, and
fully integrated with, those of other international organisations with a common interest, especially the
EU, ICES, OSPAR, HELCOM, ISO and CEN.
Description of work
The need to adopt standard procedures for the quality assurance of biodiversity studies underpins all
Work Packages and finds explicit recognition in, for example, proposed training workshops, approaches
to data management and the development of standard software governing statistical approaches to
survey design. The purpose of this cross-cutting QA Work Package is to:
- develop an integrated web-based source of standards and guidelines covering the activities of all WPs
(i.e., including field survey approaches, laboratory/data analyses, data management and the
science/advisory interface)
- establish collaborative links with national/international QA agencies concerned with the development of
standards for the conduct of marine biological work, and
- produce guidelines for the conduct of new sampling/analytical approaches, as necessary
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