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Through Ireland's national seabed mapping programme, Integrated Mapping for the Sustainable Development of Ireland's Marine Resource (INFOMAR), the collaboration between Geological Survey Ireland and the Marine Institute continues to comprehensively map Ireland's marine territory in high resolution. Through its work, the programme builds on earlier Irish seabed mapping efforts, including the Irish National Seabed Survey project in producing seabed mapping products that support Ireland's blue economy, European marine policy and international efforts to understand our global oceans. INFOMAR uses a variety of marine technologies to deliver accurate bathymetric maps and useful data products to end users through a free and open source licensing agreement. To reflect the diversity of applications these data products serve, a series of four case studies are presented here focusing on marine geophysical and geological data from locations within Ireland's marine territories. The case studies illustrate how data generated through seabed mapping may be interpreted to directly impact the generation of blue knowledge across a variety of marine environments ranging from shallow coastal and shelf waters to the deep oceanic depths of the continental slope of Ireland's marine area. The impact of Ireland's seabed mapping efforts is further considered in the context of national, European and international initiatives where Ireland's marine knowledge resource is leveraged to deliver positive benefit to the programme's stakeholders.

If marine management policies and actions are to achieve long-term sustainable use and management of the marine environment and its resources, they need to be informed by data giving the spatial distribution of seafloor habitats over large areas. Broad-scale seafloor habitat mapping is an approachwhich has the benefit of producing maps covering large extents at a reasonable cost. This approach was first investigated by Roff et al. (2003), who, acknowledging that benthic communities are strongly influenced by the physical characteristics of the seafloor, proposed overlaying mapped physical variables using a geographic information system (GIS) to produce an integrated map of the physical characteristics of the seafloor. In Europe the method was adapted to the marine section of the EUNIS (European Nature Information System) classification of habitat types under the MESH project, andwas applied at an operational level in 2011 under the EUSeaMap project. The present study compiled GIS layers for fundamental physical parameters in the northeast Atlantic, including (i) bathymetry, (ii) substrate type, (iii) light penetration depth and (iv) exposure to near-seafloor currents andwave action. Based on analyses of biological occurrences, significant thresholds were fine-tuned for each of the abiotic layers and later used in multi-criteria raster algebra for the integration of the layers into a seafloor habitat map. The final result was a harmonised broad-scale seafloor habitat map with a 250 m pixel size covering four extensive areas, i.e. Ireland, the Bay of Biscay, the Iberian Peninsula and the Azores. The map provided the first comprehensive perception of habitat spatial distribution for the Iberian Peninsula and the Azores, and fed into the initiative for a pan- European map initiated by the EUSeaMap project for Baltic, North, Celtic and Mediterranean seas. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

This paper outlines work currently being undertaken to reconstruct submerged archaeological landscapes off the north coast of Ireland. This research uses the recently-completed Joint Irish Bathymetric Survey (JIBS), which has provided full-coverage high-resolution multibeam bathymetric data for the sea-bed off the north coast. This data has been examined for evidence of past sea-level change and been used to produce palaeo-geographic reconstructions of the past landscape, which in turn have facilitated the identification of ten areas of high archaeological potential. The results presented here will form the basis of a future programme of archaeological survey and prospection.

This paper describes Phase 1 of the project ‘Archaeological Applications of the Joint Irish Bathymetric Survey (JIBS) Data’, analysing bathymetric and backscatter data derived from multibeam surveys off the north coast of Ireland. In particular, the usability of the data for shipwreck detection, identification and site characterization is explored. In Phase 1, the data was screened for anomalous sea-bed features, which were subsequently described, catalogued and categorized according to their archaeological potential and cross-referenced against existing records. A planned second phase of this project will examine each anomaly in greater detail together with the local and regional hydrodynamic conditions.

The objective of this chapter is to present a case study of the development of a strategy to increase eParticipation among a number of disadvantaged communities in the city of Limerick in Ireland. The chapter's authors' acted as facilitators for the strategy development process. The strategy group consisted of multiple educational, developmental and community and local government representatives. Given the participants' differing perspectives and interpretations the strategy development attempted to be as inclusive and transparent as possible and information technology was used that provided shared spaces using a wiki and allowing the sharing of the information (strategy document) as it emerged through various iterations.

Contrary to market hype, E-Commerce (EC) technology is expensive plus it requires highly skilled/highly paid workers to operate it. The cost dynamics of an EC project will have to be factored into any budget, however, there is little empirical evidence of what these costs might be. This research-in-progress aims to identify the total costs involved in becoming an ‘e-business’ for a large indigenous Irish corporation. This paper represents the first phase of the study. The objective of this phase is to develop an EC cost taxonomy.

Mass higher education presents serious problems to implementing active learning. Large class sizes means that traditional active learning strategies are becoming more and more difficult to implement, due to the administrative burdens associated with them. In this chapter, the authors present prediction markets as a pedagogical tool which can be used to allow teachers to implement active learning in a large group teaching environment without imposing prohibitive administrative overheads. They outline the benefits for students in the cognitive and affective domains of learning. They move on to present a case study describing in detail how our methodology can be implemented and conclude by presenting research on the effectiveness of our approach in the cognitive domain of learning. The authors conclude that prediction markets are a powerful tool for implementing active learning in a large group teaching environment. © 2012, IGI Global.

This chapter introduces external knowledge search strategy as a central element of an organizations overall knowledge management strategy. The argument cites how knowledge management has developed around a myopic internal focus and has thus far failed to take full account of the many sources of knowledge external to the organization. The chapter offers external knowledge search strategy as a means of integrating this external focus into knowledge management understanding, by providing a conceptual framework for organizations involved in the external knowledge management activity of external knowledge search. The framework identifies 10 search paths organizations may follow into the search space, four of which relate exclusively to external knowledge search. The authors hope that establishing an external element within knowledge management strategy will inform knowledge management’s recognition of the value of the extended enterprise.

Knowledge is perceived as being an organization's most valuable asset in today's world. Consequently organizations are becoming aware that they must manage the creation, storage and distribution of their knowledge within the organization. However the benefits accruing from the management of knowledge can only be realized when that knowledge is reused, either by learning from past experiences in order to prevent mistakes being repeated or as a basis for innovation. The process of reuse therefore plays a pivotal role in the leveraging of knowledge assets to sustain competitive advantage in organizations. This research investigates the role of cognitive style (innovative/adaptive) of an individual and how it influences the way in which he/she uses a knowledge repository. A study, using the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory, was carried out in the customer support department of a large electronics company. The implications of the findings are discussed and further research directions are recommended.

Effectively managing an organisation's knowledge is considered a key success factor in today's increasingly competitive business environment. This paper makes the case that a relationship exists between the cognitive styles of producers and consumers of knowledge and the manner in which they contribute to and/or reuse Knowledge Management (KM) systems, in an organisational context. The research combines the literature on KM, which pertains to the leveraging of organisational knowledge for the purpose of achieving competitive advantage through effective problem solving and innovation; and Adaption Innovation Theory, which argues that individuals differ in the manner in which they problem solve, made decisions and are creative, based on their cognitive styles. It is a first attempt to study, using Kirton's Adaption Innovation Theory, the relationship that exists between cognitive style and the manner in which individuals contribute to and/or reuse organisational knowledge, stored in knowledge repositories.