European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet)
Use Cases
Submit your Use Case
To understand the full benefits of EMODnet, users are kindly asked to describe how EMODnet supports them in their daily work and activities.
If you have developed an application using EMODnet products that you would like to share with us or if you use EMODnet data for other purposes, submit your use case by contacting secretariat@emodnet.ec.europa.eu.
To ensure coherent implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), the Common Implementation Strategy (CIS) was adopted by the Member States and the European Commission, also involving the Regional Sea conventions, as well as industry representatives and non-governmental organisations. The Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission's science and knowledge service, is part of the CIS and plays a key role in the implementation of the MSFD. JRC’s mission is to anticipate challenges related to EU policy development, integrate science and knowledge into legislation to design new policies, and monitor their implementation and impact. The JRC works to facilitate the exchange of harmonised marine policy and scientific information and to provide the CIS of the MSFD and other EU policies with up-to-date scientific knowledge. In order to best address the individual MSFD descriptors, technical groups were established within the CIS for marine litter, underwater noise, seabed integrity and data, as well as MSFD expert networks for other descriptors.
The University of Southampton and its Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute is a major European centre for oceanography and marine geoscience. The Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute (SMMI) is the largest entity of its kind in the world, with expertise in everything from naval architecture to social sciences and work to address issues in the natural ocean environment (marine) and human use of the sea (maritime).
Venice Lagoon Plastic Free (VLPF) is a non-profit organization based in Venice (Italy), listed on the National Single Third Sector Registry (RUNTS), the EMODnet data providers list, supporter of the WWF Plastic Smart City Initiative and signatory of the EU Charter Restore our Ocean and Water mission. The VLPF team is the co-designer of the REMEDIES Shoreline ML App together with Infordata Sistemi (Italy), developed under the Horizon Europe REMEDIES project. EMODnet was used to retrieve relevant historical marine litter data in order to plan and enrich our work on the pan European marine litter database. In addition, downloaded data are used for advanced statistics and data comparison during the development of the Beach Litter Monitoring App. EMODnet also provided valuable services such as the beach litter format validator, which assisted in generating correct datasets that then were submitted to the EMODnet ingestion portal.
MPA Europe project (https://mpa-europe.eu/). The MPA Europe project is using a holistic range of measures of biodiversity from species to ecosystems, including habitats, to map the optimal areas for Marine Protected Areas implementation in Europe. Areas will be prioritised using systematic conservation planning software, which enables alternative weighting of variables and multiple scenarios and thus support wider marine spatial planning. OBIS (https://obis.org/) is responsible for WP3, which will generate species distribution models for at least half of all marine species in Europe to be utilized in the prioritization process.
EOSC-Future is an EU-funded H2020 project that lasted from April 2021 to the end of March 2024. The project implemented the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). EOSC provides European researchers with a virtual environment for sharing and accessing research data across borders and scientific disciplines. EOSC-Future developed and operated key components of the EOSC core: the services required for the operation of the EOSC. Some examples of the services developed within EOSC Future are the EOSC Marketplace, the EOSC Interoperability Framework, the EOSC Catalogue.
The Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) is an autonomous Belgian non-profit organization which conducts interdisciplinary research on the ocean, seas, coast and estuaries. Its mission is to strengthen science-based knowledge and share it as widely as possible. VLIZ uses new technologies, such as robotics, and focuses on innovation and valorisation. Research areas include the ocean and seas, coasts and tidal systems as well as areas where Flemish marine scientists are or were active.
EUROqCHARM is an EU-funded H2020 project that lasted from 01 November 2020 – 31 October 2023. The project provided harmonised methodologies for the monitoring and assessment of marine plastics (macro-, micro- and nano-) in all environmental compartments: water, soil/sediment, air, and biota. Additionally, it released blueprints for standards of marine litter monitoring and data management and recommendations for policy and legislation.
As part of the AdriaClim project, researchers from the University of Bologna and the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change in Italy utilized EMODnet Chemistry data to create a detailed 3D biogeochemical model for the Adriatic Sea. Their analysis yielded insights into future biogeochemical changes driven by climate change, affecting marine ecosystems and key economic sectors like fisheries.
The Horizon Europe MSP4Bio project used EMODnet multidisciplinary marine in situ data, including from Bathymetry, Biology and many other thematic data, to inform an Ecological-Socio-Economic (ESE) management framework used for science-based MSP to safeguard and restore biodiversity in a coherent European MPA network.
