BlueBRIDGE receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 675680 www.bluebridge-vres.eu

BlueBRIDGE: supporting maritime spatial planning through provision of data and analysis

Miles Macmillan-LawlerGRID-ArendalPartners: FAO, GRID-Arendal, CLS, Engineering

Miles.macmillan-lawler@grida.no

The context

Maritime Spatial PlanningCompetition for maritime space – for renewable energy equipment, aquaculture and other growth areas – has

highlighted the need for efficient management, to avoid potential conflict and create synergies between different activities

EU Maritime Spatial Planning

By 2020 […] 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem

services, are protected […]CBD Aichi target 11

"Understanding how ecosystems of EU e-Infrastructures can boost Blue Growth", 11 January 2017, Brussels

The challengesMaritime spatial planning requires information on the location of activities and how these relate to the environment and management measures to inform decision makingKey challenges include:• Incomplete or non-existent information on the location of

human uses (e.g. aquaculture facilities)• Information on human uses, management and environment

not easily accessible (in one place)• Time consuming to collate and analyse the relationships

between human uses, management and environment

"Understanding how ecosystems of EU e-Infrastructures can boost Blue Growth", 11 January 2017, Brussels

The challengesTwo key challenges being addressed by the BlueBRIDGE project

Develop rapid inventories ofAquaculture facilities

Develop tools to assess featuresin marine managed areas

(e.g. MPAs)

"Understanding how ecosystems of EU e-Infrastructures can boost Blue Growth", 11 January 2017, Brussels

The BlueBRIDGE solutions: Aquaculture

Where are all the aquaculture cages in Greece?Earth observation imagery to derive aquaculture cage locations

BlueBRIDGE workshop, 11 January 2017, Brussels, Belgium

The BlueBRIDGE solutions: Aquaculture

Where are all the aquaculture cages in Greece?431 farms in FAO database (309 excluding hatchery and non-cage farms)253 assessed by tool8699 fish cages for a total of 1 931 043 m²56 ‘missing farms’:

• 22 due to image availability (no high resolution available image from Bing WMS)

• Some with clouds• Some due to merging

"Understanding how ecosystems of EU e-Infrastructures can boost Blue Growth", 11 January 2017, Brussels

The BlueBRIDGE solutions: Protected Areas

What is protected in the Bahamas protected area network?Marine protected areas (Protected Planet)Exclusive economic zones (Marine Regions), Ecoregions (MEOW/PPOW) Seagrass, mangroves and coral reefs (WCMC), seafloor geomorphology (GRIDA)

The BlueBRIDGE solutions: Protected Areas

What is protected in the Bahamas protected area network?

• 4.1 per cent of coral reefs represented in MPAs• Deep sea features such as seamounts and canyons are

currently not represented in MPAs• This information can be used to prioritise the location of future

MPAs to fully achieve committments under CBD Aichi target 11

The BlueBRIDGE benefits• Collation and access to relevant data and metadata• Rapid processing time - seconds and minutes instead of hours

and days!• Repeatability and comparability of processing• Standardised reporting tools• Infrastructure can be accessed by external projects (e.g. JRC

BIOPAMA Project)

"Understanding how ecosystems of EU e-Infrastructures can boost Blue Growth", 11 January 2017, Brussels

Next stepsAquaculture pond detection

IndonesiaMangrove detection

Indonesia

Integrate regional datasetsEurope/Caribbean

User data into protected area algorithmMPAs / ecological features

ImpactAquaculture AtlasWith little overhead, countries can identify the location of aquaculture facilities to feed into management and MSP

Protected AreasCountries can report on their protected area networks to determine how well they are representing a standard range of ecologically relevant features (Aichi target 11)

"Understanding how ecosystems of EU e-Infrastructures can boost Blue Growth", 11 January 2017, Brussels

Thank YouQuestions?