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Maritime Forum

Costs and benefits of EMODnet

There was some discussion in the Member States Expert Group about some of the numbers used in our presentation of proposed activities for marine knowledge.

The impact assessment that accompanied our first Communication for marine knowledge provides explanations on costs and benefits. We believe that it gives a reasonable estimate of the size of the marine data infrastructure.

The amount of money spent on marine monitoring from space is about €400 million per year. This was estimated by the European Space Agency and based on the total cost of the Earth observation satellites multiplied by the proportion of images used over the ocean. The spending on in-situ monitoring by public bodies was estimated at about €1 billion per year by a contractor. This is of course much more difficult to estimate as there are many institutions involved. The ships are a significant component of the cost: there are more than a hundred research vessels in Europe and this does not include those operated by navies for hydrographic work.

The contractor conducted the assessment through a literature review, an on-line questionnaire, a set of interviews and analysis. The report is in the public domain and can be downloaded from here.

https://maritime-forum.ec.europa.eu/node/502

A US-study helped us to estimate the benefit of EMODnet. The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimate that having a fragmented, as opposed to an integrated, marine data infrastructure adds an additional burden of 25% to any data processing operation. So if we know how much is being spent by industry, public authorities and research institutes on marine data processing, then we can estimate the benefit. This comes to about €300 million a year – €150 million for industry, €100 million for science and €56 million for public adminstrations. We now believe that this is an underestimate because we based it on the 2009 marine economy. Recent developments, such as the increase in wind farm construction, indicate that the savings could be much more.

It is harder to estimate the new business that might be generated by better access to data. However, we can draw analogies. In the United States, for example, meteorological data is much easier to access than in Europe and, as a result, a whole industry has developed selling services to farmers, sailors etc.

Finally, the reduction of uncertainty will also provide a benefit. We can't really put a number on this but, for instance, if better monitoring helps us to reduce uncertainty in future sea-level rise by 25% then we can save about €100 million per year in sea defences. The method is described in the contractor's report and in our impact assessment.

We were very conservative in our estimates. A Price-Waterhouse study on behalf of the Irish government estimates that investment in seabed mapping produces benefits six times the money spent. A recent study on behalf of NOAA claims that coastal mapping pays back by a factor of 24.

You can find the impact assessment on

https://maritime-forum.ec.europa.eu/node/1305

This was presented at the same time as our Communication "Marine Knowledge 2020" in September 2010 and is publicly available.

We counted downloads of data from EMODnet during 2011:

https://maritime-forum.ec.europa.eu/node/2493

For the new contracts, which will start early next year, we aim to measure these in a more routine and consistent way. This requirement has been included in the call for tender.

We would be grateful for any feedback because we will shortly be undertaking another impact assessment in the light of increased experience and knowledge gained since the previous one.

As a further follow-up to the Expert Group meeting, we will shortly be sending you more information about the Flanders offer to develop a portal for EMODnet