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Energy, Climate change, Environment

Black Sea

The Black Sea Checkpoint was a sea-basin monitoring system assessment activity aiming to support sustainable growth in the marine and maritime economy by assessing the potential of avalable marine observation and data services to address end-user needs. Specifically the Black Sea Checkpoint aimed to:

 

  • Clarify the observation landscape of all compartments of the marine environment and highlight the existing programs at  national, European and international level;
  • Evaluate fitness for use indicators that show the accessibility and usability of observation and modeling data sets and their roles and synergies based upon targeted applications;
  • Prioritize user needs in order to optimize monitoring systems in terms of accessibility, availability, multiple-use, efficiency, reliability, time consistency, space consistency, etc. and the planning of the technological advancements, new accessibility, new assembly protocols and observational priorities required in the future to meet the challenges.

Challenges


 

The Checkpoint regional projects established a method for ‘valuing’ the marine data made available through initiatives such as EMODnet and Copernicus for the benefit of key downstream applications to foster the blue economy.

The challenges provide a way to value data and make informed choices about the suitability of a dataset to solve their particular problem.

As with other EMODnet Checkpoints, EMODnet BlackSea assessed basin-monitoring systems on the basis of the data needs from 11 end-user applications. These were of paramount importance for: (i) the blue economy sector (offshore industries, fisheries); (ii) marine environment variability and change (eutrophication, river inputs and ocean climate change impacts); (iii) emergency management (oil spills); and (iv) preservation of natural resources and biodiversity (Marine Protected Areas).