a4a assessment model simulation testing

The a4a initiative aims to provide timely and cost effective advice for the circa. 250 fish stocks that, through the EU Data Collection Framework, will have at least 10 years of data by the year 2020. Current processes for assessing the state of and managing fish stocks are intensive processes, each stock requiring the attention of one or more stock assessment scientist to produce preliminary catch advice, which is subsequently reviewed by one or two committees before the final catch advice is published. Ingrained in the development of these processes has been the development of more and more complex stock assessment models which typically require highly skilled personnel to set up and run. The a4a initiative seeks to overcome these issues by developing a flexible, robust and easy to use stock assessment model, thus making stock assessment accessible to a wide range of scientists that do not have the high skilled quantitative background required to run very complex models. Forthcoming research will describe how to overcome the burden of producing catch advice for such a large number of stocks. This technical report presents assessment model simulation testing undertaken under the a4a Initiative.