There have been four workshops for the Big Picture group, to date.
2023 Big Picture Workshop
The Big Picture Group workshop held on January 18 and 19 brought together a diverse group of experts from academia, government, and stakeholders to share progress, explore funding opportunities, and discuss the challenges of innovation in the field of benthic imagery. The main goal of the workshop was to provide a platform for attendees to exchange ideas, examine the latest advancements, and to delve into the challenges of developing standards and working collaboratively within the UK. The event aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of benthic imagery and to identify areas for future growth and development; it was planned around the outcomes of online workshops that took place in December 2022.
The Workshop materials will be published shortly, please contact the Big Picture Group if you require these materials earlier.
2022 The Big Picture Workshops
The Big Picture Workshops, facilitated by JNCC in November, December 2022 were a series of seven online sessions aimed at advancing the field of benthic imagery acquisition and analysis. The workshops targeted each of the themes outlined in the Benthic Imagery Action Plan (BIAP), including governance and coordination, imagery acquisition, overarching guidelines, annotation approaches, software and machine learning, training and quality assurance, and data flows. The workshops brought together experts from academia, government, and consultancies to share knowledge and explore new techniques and technologies. The goal of the workshops was to refocus the ambitions of the group, driving progress towards standardised and comparable benthic ecosystem datasets.
The Workshop materials will be published shortly, please contact the Big Picture Group if you require these materials earlier.
2021 Big Picture II
After the 2019 workshop, the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions led to the second workshop 'BIG PICTURE II' being held exclusively online in March 2021. Nevertheless, the event brought together 74 stakeholders for three days and showcased two years of benthic imagery innovation and collaboration, demonstrating progress and accomplishments from the BIAP.
The workshop sessions were recorded and can be viewed online.
2019 Big Picture
This workshop was hosted by JNCC and held as an in-person event. The workshop gathered together 29 organizations from the marine monitoring and assessment field in the UK and beyond. During the event, which took place from 19 to 22 March 2019, experts addressed a variety of topics related to collecting, analysing, and sharing benthic imagery. They worked together to find solutions and opportunities, while exploring ways to integrate new technologies like computer vision and machine-learning into their current workflows.
The BIG PICTURE workshop yielded two primary results: the creation of the Benthic Imagery Action Plan (BIAP) for the UK and the establishment of the Big Picture Group. The BIAP comprises 87 tasks grouped into seven coherent workflows, which incorporate and prioritise all of the recommendations from the workshops. It has received the endorsement of the Healthy & Biologically Diverse Seas Evidence Group (HBDSEG) in the UK, and progress towards its achievement is reported to the Northeast Atlantic Marine Biological Analytical Quality Control Scheme (NMBAQC).
2019 Big Picture Report
Fisher, Helen & van Rein, Henk & Harris, Richard. (2019). THE BIG PICTURE Benthic Imagery Analysis Workshop Report. 2019 Big Picture Workshop Report.
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