Use Cases

The data on EMODnet Human Activities occurrence and distribution was used to investigate the regulations of activities and protection provided by Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the European Union (EU). This PhD research study, supported by CCMAR, CNRS, and INRAE research institutes, highlights the persistent data gap and limitations of current EU MPAs and serves as a benchmark for monitoring and future evaluation of MPA policies.

The Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) Challenge is an open-source platoform developed by Breda University of Applied Sciences. It hels users manage the blue economy and marine enviornmeny by simulating the impact of decisions on energy, shipping, and marine life. The simulations encourage users to utilize the best available data for assessing the current status and planning the future development of sea space. The data includes EMODnet services, which were used in an MSP Challenge to map bathymetry, biology, human activity and seabed habitat data for a simulation game supporting educational and stakeholder engagement.

The Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere (IMPA), one of the EMODnet partners, is a state laboratory whose mission is to promote and coordinate scientific research, technological development, innovation and services on sea and atmosphere. IPMA is responsible for executing the geophysical, geological, geotechnical and environmental studies in the REPowereu project, which has the aim of developing up to 10 GW of electrical production centers in the offshore of Portugal, based on oceanic renewable energy until 2030.

The user organisation

The European Commission Directorate-General for Environment (EC DG ENV) has funded research in the Mediterranean Member States as part of the MEDREGION project to support the implementation of Good Environmental Status (GES) as defined under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). 

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.