A Scoping Review on GIS Technologies Applied to Farmed Fish Health Management

SIMPLE SUMMARY: In the growing aquaculture sector, more concerns have arisen regarding health management in farmed fish. Geographic information systems (GISs) dedicated to storing, collecting, retrieving, transforming, and displaying large sets of spatial data may help enhance disease control and surveillance, especially during outbreaks. To shed light on the actual implementation of GISs for health management in farmed fish in marine and freshwater environments, this scoping review analysed 54 relevant retained records from a base of over 1000 papers in the scientific literature published between 2010 and 2022. What stands out from this literature analysis is that these remote technologies are most successfully adopted in the highly valued salmonid farming industry of northern Europe and Chile. Furthermore, implementing such remote technologies and related disease mapping seemed particularly effective in controlling viral outbreaks. This review highlighted the gap between the potential of these smart GIS tools and the actual benefits accrued for disease control and surveillance when applied to farmed aquatic animals. ABSTRACT: Finfish aquaculture, one of the fastest growing intensive sectors worldwide, is threatened by numerous transmissible diseases that may have devastating impacts on its economic sustainability. This review (2010–2022) used a PRISMA extension for scoping reviews and a text mining approach to explore the extent to which geographical information systems (GIS) are used in farmed fish health management and to unveil the main GIS technologies, databases, and functions used to update the spatiotemporal data underpinning risk and predictive models in aquatic surveillance programmes. After filtering for eligibility criteria, the literature search provided 54 records, highlighting the limited use of GIS technologies for disease prevention and control, as well as the prevalence of GIS application in marine salmonid farming, especially for viruses and parasitic diseases typically associated with these species. The text mining generated five main research areas, underlining a limited range of investigated species, rearing environments, and diseases, as well as highlighting the lack of GIS-based methodologies at the core of such publications. This scoping review provides a source of information for future more detailed literature analyses and outcomes to support the development of geospatial disease spread models and expand in-field GIS technologies for the prevention and mitigation of fish disease epidemics.