Invasiveness Screening Kit (ISK) v3: an integrated multilingual decision-support platform for non-native species risk identification

Abstract

Risk identification of non-native species is widely used to support prioritization, early warning, horizon scanning and management decisions. Over the past two decades, the Invasiveness Screening Kit (ISK) framework of decision-support tools has developed through aquatic, terrestrial animal and terrestrial plant applications, but until now these toolkits have been distributed and used as separate software environments. ISK v3 provides a single integrated Microsoft Excel/Visual Basic for Applications platform for the Aquatic Species Invasiveness Screening Kit (AS-ISK), Terrestrial Animal Species Invasiveness Screening Kit (TAS-ISK) and Terrestrial Plant Species Invasiveness Screening Kit (TPS-ISK). It preserves the established questionnaires, scoring logic and multilingual implementation of the three toolkits within a single integrated interface, while introducing improved harmonized database workflows, screening record management, taxonomic verification, threshold handling with built-in calibration, risk summaries, reporting, merging and export functions as well as controlled access to separate Excel instances. The platform supports 31 languages, toolkit-specific databases, conversion of compatible v2 databases, import of legacy aquatic first-generation ISK databases into AS-ISK, online verification through major taxonomic and biodiversity data resources, and use of a global a priori categorization dataset for calibration. ISK v3 preserves the reproducible screening structure of the three toolkits while improving consistency, transparency and traceability in non-native species risk identification and reducing fragmentation across toolkits. It provides a common platform for researchers, managers and institutions applying risk identification workflows across aquatic, terrestrial animal and terrestrial plant taxa.