Using governance to govern: a geospatial data approach to measuring Marine Spatial Planning governance.

Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) has emerged as central to achieving policy goals in ocean governance. As the list of commitments and challenges grows, governments are urged to increase their delivery capacity. MSP governance aims to manage individual and collective behaviours and government actions in pursuit of public goods and related societal outcomes through the use of marine resources and space. While substantive research on MSP governance is available, none of it uses a geospatial data approach.

Governance is a complex topic that is not readily amenable to data approaches and has a limited scale dimension for geographical representation. Hence, it is either excluded from the geographical information systems or included at the bare minimum: the administrative units, dividing areas where countries have and/or exercise jurisdictional rights, for local, regional and national governance, separated by administrative boundaries. However, there are substantive benefits in advancing towards a more analytical approach. Operationalizing governance through data sets allows for: i) monitoring, review and improvement; ii) demonstrating progress and showcasing public action in designing and implementing MSP plans; iii) supporting adaptive planning and revisions according to performance and new policy objectives; iv) allowing cross-comparison and benchmarking at international level.

We present an analytical model to assess the capacity and performance of MSP governance. The module defines what objectives and attributes of the governance system are pivotal (conceptual module), what types of data are available, how they can be meaningfully represented on a spatial scale (Analytics Input & Data Model), as well as how the data output could be at service in preparing, monitoring and updating MSP (Analytics Output). The conceptual design of the governance module builds on the multilevel governance framework, as well as the governance, institutional, public administration and organizational theories.

The primary goal of MSP-Gov is to conduct exploratory data analysis on instruments and mechanisms for coordination, linking them with spatial representations of the governance system's plans and features. Combining qualitative analytical techniques, MSP-Gov facilitates understanding how coordination influences the plan's implementation, setting the baseline and generating evidence for improving vertical, horizontal and regional coordination. The module is currently being tested in three case studies in Europe: one at the local level (Galicia, Spain), one at a cross-border level between three countries (West Mediterranean, including Italy, France and Spain), and one at the regional sea basin (Baltic, eight countries). This talk summarizes the findings in collecting, organizing and analysing the governance data, the challenges of designing data sets systematically integrated with other data layers and represented through visualization tools, and the usefulness of putting governance on a map to inform decision-making.