"Consolidating coastal and marine information for integrated management of European maritime areas" (4.3)

Chair: Mr. Andrus Meiner (EEA)

Speakers:

Mr. Carlos Berrozpe-García (European Commission - DG ENV)

Mr. Iain Shepherd (European Commission - DG MARE)

Ms. Trine Christiansen (European Environment Agency)

Ms. Eleni Marianou (Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions)

Mr. Pierre Bahurel (Mercator Ocean)

Mr. Alejandro Iglesias-Campos (ETC-LUSI/Junta de Andalucía)

1. Three key messages

• There is a need for a consolidated marine/maritime knowledge platform to support the integrated management of European Maritime Areas. Increasing amount of available data requires corresponding effort for data integration and streamlining.
• Methods of data collection, data catalogues and indicators should follow agreed principles and standards set up by Inspire directive, principles of Shared Environmental Information System, GMES Marine service, EMODnet and reporting requirements for Marine strategy framework directive and regional sea conventions.
• Integration should improve data and information exchange among different policy areas as well as different governance levels with specific emphasis on vertical integration to benefit from information resources in the EU maritime regions.

2. Summary of the interventions from the panel (1-2 pages)

Andrus Meiner welcomed workshop participants, introduced the speakers and presented apologies from Ronan Uhel who could not be present.

Mr. Berrozpe reviewed all provisions of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) that foresee data collection, reporting and systematising. He stressed the importance of adopting Good environmental status criteria that will provide limits of sustainability in the frame of Integrated Maritime Policy. Milestones of the directive relevant to data are: initial assessment, assessment of pressures, socio-economic analysis of sea uses, monitoring programmes and comprehensive report. There is important role for regional sea conventions in achieving these goals.

Mr. Shepherd introduced the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) and principles of its formation. He informed about practical developments such as fore coming Commission’s Communication on Marine knowledge 2020 and perspectives of financing of EMODnet activities starting from 2013. He specifically addressed the coordination issue of different European data collection and reporting activities. He emphasised the need of comparable data for management and planning of the marine environment and the maritime activities.

Ms. Christiansen presented the EEA main tasks and tools, networking amongst countries and European Topic Centres, periodic reporting and the provision of access to environmental information and data. She mentioned that the MSFD provides a legal and practical basis for data integration, as well as EMODnet and the WISE-Marine that are contributing to creation of a common European platform for marine environmental information. MSFD also establishes that marine information must be available for users and objective of WISE-Marine is to make this happen. There is a need to consolidate data where isolated research initiatives are not contributing to the general interest of producing extended datasets that use common and comparable parameters. In this context there is a role of new and innovative monitoring tools.

Mr. Bahurel introduced FP7 integrated project MyOcean, the participating organisations and the main objectives of the project: to have a service providing ocean forecasts and reanalysis of the regional seas of Europe. with good information in order to make it available for users. Data are provided by modelling forecasting centres organised around the regional seas as well as the global ocean. The information provided is available for using in new models and are sometimes used for integrating the marine information for assessments. MyOcean databases will be open and freely accessible for all the users, data and other products are already available in the web catalogue http://www.myocean.eu.org/. He also introduced the FP6 project ECOOP database http://www.ecoop.eu/.

Ms. Marianou (assisted by Ms Corinne Lochet) introduced the work of the CRPM as alternative view to sectoral approaches that tend to dominate at EU and national level. CPMR as network of maritime regions establishes the sea basin as a geographical and management unit for data compilation and visualisation, making territorial dimension explicit and improving the data continuity across administrative borders. The CRPM is developing indicators as a technical/practical element for helping the political decisions and for supporting the territorial cohesion linked to maritime issues and policy development. It establishes that data needs have to be coordinated. She proposed to use the existing databases and work done in the different regions to avoid duplication of efforts and make good practices available. In this regard, EMODnet should develop as an open data platform supporting data sharing amongst users and institutions.

Mr. Iglesias-Campos introduced the work done by the Regional Ministry of Environment with its Environmental Information Network of Andalusia (REDIAM), a shared environmental information system applying all the European directives for data accessibility, management and infrastructure. He made a review of the most important products on coastal and marine data and information in Andalusia, with special interest showing the Coastal and Marine Information System which integrates data and information from land and sea in a way that coastline is not a barrier or limit for the analysis. Additionally different data viewers and web data services were shown emphasizing the innovative functionalities that Andalusia is putting in practice facilitating the free accessibility of data by all kind of users.

3. Discussion:

Key questions and messages from the floor, as well as responses given by the panellists. If possible please indicate names and organisations of persons intervening in the discussion.

The discussion was focused on 1) too little understanding how collected data are to be analysed and 2) insufficient coordination of data collection activities. Both comments were dismissed by the panel, and in fact several presentations highlighted that it is a specific objective to link the European level initiatives shaped by the Integrated Maritime Policy and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive. These initiatives include WISE-Marine, EMODNET, and the Marine Service under GMES, and the European Environment Agency is indeed acting to achieve an operational manifestation of these links. However, many of the processes are still in the initial phase and therefore much is still to be done - so the links are perhaps still not seen clearly. This was recognised by following exchange between CPMR and European organisations, where mutual benefits of including data from regions was recognised. In particular, the EEA discussed practical steps to enhance cooperation with CPMR.

4. Links to presentations and speeches by speakers, and other documentation relevant for the workshop

All the presentations are available from workshop coordinator.

Contact person:

Andrus Meiner

Project Manager - Regional assessment and geospatial data

European Environment Agency

Kogens Nytorv, 6

DK – 1050 Copenhagen (K), Denmark

Tel: + 45 3336 7182

Fax: + 45 3336 7293

(Lead: EEA, European Environment Agency)