SESAMME, an iPad app, which enables researchers and stakeholders to build interactive pictures of socio-ecological systems, was unveiled at PEMSEA’s East Asian Seas 2015 Congress at Da Nang, Viet Nam, during November.
SESAMME was designed to capture information about system components (such as resources, activities, pressures and decisions) from local communities and help them visualise how these components interact.
The app is being used by the Capturing Coral Reef & Related Ecosystem Services (CCRES) project to understand specific socio-ecological problems of fish catch decline, mangrove loss, water pollution and food insecurity in the East Asia-Pacific region.
SESAMME stands for Socio-Ecological Systems App for Mental Model Elicitation.
SESAMME is the ‘brainchild’ of CCRES researchers Dr Russell Richards and Dr Carl Smith from the School of Agriculture and Food Sciences at The University of Queensland. It has been developed in consultation with the project’s in-country partners in Indonesia and the Philippines.
Says Dr Richards: "The enthusiasm, input and testing from our in-country partners in CCRES have been invaluable in taking SESAMME from a concept to an engagement tool. SESAMME appears to have really connected with the people we have engaged with in our studies in the Philippines and Indonesia."
SESAMME is one of several CCRES technical models and planning tools being developed to assist coastal planners, managers and policymakers prepare community-based resource management plans.
SESAMME will be available through the App store in 2016.
For more details, contact:
Dr Russell Richards
School of Agriculture and Food Sciences
The University of Queensland
T (+61 7) 3365 2174
M (+61) 449 686 737
r.richards1@uq.edu.au
