Comment:

The project is to be commended for looking at ways to add value to the database. For example, the project plans to provide information to hatcheries that can be used for managing hatchery practices.

1. Objectives, Significance to Regional Programs, and Technical Background

Objectives are clear. The project provides support for the COMPASS life-cycle model.

The proposal identifies that this project's significance to regional programs is due to providing data integration, web-based information, and analytical services that help connect primary databases, monitoring programs, decision makers, and resource users.

2. Results and Adaptive Management

The proposal states that services provided by this project support critical uncertainties research themes (D) Hydrosystem flow and passage operations and (F) Population structures of diversity identified in the Council's 2017 Research Plan. This project also reports data availability, data anomalies, formatting, and accuracy issues to primary data sources. Evidence of the amount and utility of this feedback to primary sources would be useful for this and future ISRP reviews.

Adaptive management is mentioned in the proposal in the sense that this project generates products such as data tools, analysis methods, and predictive models that can be used to support all areas of Fish and Wildlife Program adaptive management. It appears that adaptive management per se is not applied within this project but could be of use to consider the impact of vastly more data from increased detections, more precise detections, and additional methods of tagging.

3. Methods: Project Relationships, Work Types, and Deliverables

The proposal documents relationships that this second-tier data base has with many data base projects in the region. This project is a data management work type with data management issues dealt with properly. The interactive web-based query system appears to work very well. Most of the sources for DART data are the entities that provide public access to primary data. This project provides access to its research database through a web-based interface and through delivery of user-requested datasets and metadata. It is not clear how it is decided which data should be stored in DART.

The project develops procedures to ensure the quality of all integrated datasets. It also provides feedback to primary data sources on data quality issues.

1. Purpose: Significance to Regional Programs, Technical Background, and Objectives

DART provides an important and useful Tier 2 database, data repository, web-based data reporting and analysis services. The proposal provides evidence that DART is used daily by a number of organizations, including the Action Agencies, NOAA, State Agencies, and Tribes.

2. History: Accomplishments, Results, and Adaptive Management (ISRP Review of Results)

For the past 6 years, DART annually delivers 400,000-600,000 database query results. DART provides analysis capabilities for evaluating water and fishery status and management actions for a real-time look into the current status of the resource and provides access to potential early warning triggers on a daily basis.

3. Project Relationships, Emerging Limiting Factors, and Tailored Questions for Type of Work (hatchery, RME, tagging)

DART is the primary publicly accessible repository for a number of projects in the region including the Adult Anadromous Fish Radiotelemetry Project (1996-2004), the cooperative Mid Columbia Status for Juvenile and Adult Salmon, and adult passage counts from Chelan and Grant County PUDs as well as the Tumwater and Zosel dams.

4. Deliverables, Work Elements, Metrics, and Methods

Deliverables, work elements, metrics, and methods were presented.

Modified by Dal Marsters on 4/16/2012 8:47:15 PM.

This is an exemplary proposal among the database projects, for a project that appears to provide products of widespread use and value. The project title should be probably be changed, however, to reflect the fact that this is DART enhanced with additional analytical functions. The primary significance to regional programs is to the Power Act sections requiring improved passage survival and flows. The proposal includes excellent M&E.

The proposal presents a brief but clear background on the utility of the second-tier database provided by this project, although the ultimate value of this data to fish management is not explicitly described. A clear rationale is provided for the need for the integrated environmental data and fish passage data and analysis provided by DART. Detailed lists of the analyses provided by DART are included, as well as a number of analyses for which data and analytical assistance was provided.

The project's history is described in an excellent interpretive narrative on actions tied to their accomplishments, the process of their evolution and the reasons why. It discusses the types of internal monitoring performed through post-season analysis of passage predictions. A figure of monthly usage from 1998-2005 is provided, as well as a list of entities using DART between 2004-2005, and the number of hosts served by season. Less clear, however, is how useful this information has been to all the regional entities that tapped it. Also, how is this information accessed? Are the raw data they capture and make available checked for accuracy? Are DART analyses peer-reviewed? Have their second-tier databases been used effectively for adaptive management?

A new element includes absorbing some of the routine analysis function of the Fish Passage Center. Part of the proposal is to continue the Fish Passage Consortium, a group of PNW university faculty with expertise in fish passage issues. The Council and Bonneville will need to specifically distinguish which work elements should be funded to fulfill the tasks of the FPC, if the FPC is not funded. There always has been some overlap with FPC, DART and NOAA, but the ISRP has considered this a value added to the program rather than redundant.

A long list of measurable objectives relate to the reporting and analysis functions of DART as well as newly added functions. These relate to provision of information to managers to analyze proposed hydro operations on fish (pre-season), tracking fish passage (in-season), and measuring the effect of the hydrosystem on fish (post-season). Fourteen objectives are listed. Methods are presented in detail with an explanatory background section.

M&E is built into this project throughout. In the last review the ISRP recommended that the next proposal from this sponsor should include an evaluative summary of usage that indicates the distribution of use across different types of users and products, the details of a plan for how DART assesses demand for current and new products, the type of outreach that is done to assess demand, and methods used to inform and expand the user base. The sponsors have responded to this recommendation in their project operations, the results of which are reported in this proposal. The amount, distribution, and type of use are monitored quarterly for potential improvement in services. Post-season evaluations of pre-season predictions are conducted on a routine basis. Services are reviewed at the end of the year in a series of regional meetings to identify areas of needed modification. The project has excellent provisions for information transfer of data, analysis, support services, and for adaptive modification of information transfer practices on the basis of feedback.