Reprogramming of the Self-Assessment Tool of the IPAM Toolbox

With the self-assessment tool of the IPAM Toolbox, a pioneering, freely available platform was made available in 2005, on which students and protected area managers can map their current status on the development path of a protected area. On the one hand, the tool offers a chronological overview of the development phases and the necessary sub-steps (FoA, fields of action); on the other hand, recommendations formulated as questions provide an overview of the development status. The technical implementation concept was developed by E.C.O. in 2003-2004 and implemented by an external company as a PHP application, MySQL database and content management system (EzPublish). Due to technical developments and new security standards, the original PHP code and the outdated and no longer developed EzPublish system can no longer be offered as an online service. In order to meet the need and demand for the self-assessment in training as well as in practical protected area management, a reprogramming of the self-assessment tool on current technical platforms and according to applicable security standards is being implemented in the course of this project. The implementation is carried out by E.C.O. in cooperation with the IT service provider 43Bits GmbH in Graz. The programming of the server-side backend is done in Java and is implemented in a JHipster framework (user administration, database interface, logic elements). Documents and source code are managed in the Bitbucket environment and, after implementation, made available to the client on this platform for further development.