The Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management

The Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management is committed to improving quality of life, access and mobility in a clean, safe and sustainable environment. The Ministry strives to create an efficient network of roads, railways, waterways, and airways, and to implement effective practices to better manage floods and improve air and water quality.

The challenge

The Maritime Spatial Planning Directive requires EU Member States to draw and apply maritime spatial plans. The Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management is the coordinating ministry for the integrated North Sea policy and manages the Dutch part of the North Sea. High on its agenda there is the construction of new offshore windfarms. However, the North Sea basin is under a lot of pressure and finding suitable locations is not an easy task.

Transforming governmental ambitions of sustainable use of the sea into something concrete means fitting all the needs in one coherent spatial plan, which implies trade-offs. The situation can become very complex when all the different stakeholders and interests are considered (e.g., marine protection, aquaculture, shipping lanes, recreational activities, existing telecom, energy corridors, etc.). Other pieces of the puzzle, such as the capacity of the electricity grid, the infrastructure required to get the energy from the windfarm on the national grid, and boundary conditions, are also crucial to meet the national ambitions for offshore windfarm development.

The satellite solution

The Breda University of Applied Sciences is a government-funded higher education institute in the Netherlands. Under the Academy for Games and Media, the University has a research programme concerning serious games and complex decision-making. One of its projects is a Maritime Spatial Planning simulation platform relying on game technology and design, meant for those who must spatially plan the sea. Since a few years, the MSP Challenge Simulation Platform is used within the Digital Twin North Sea project, a cooperation between government agencies, knowledge institutes and the business community to create a state-of-the-art support tool for policy makers, stakeholders, scientists, and citizens.

This ‘digital replica’ of the North Sea simulates spatial plans and their effects. The current Digital Twin North Sea consists of three components: a browser version, the MSP Challenge simulation platform, and a virtual reality prototype module. The tool offers a map of the North Sea basin to simulate the energy production and the infrastructure needed to get the maximum capacity from wind farms installed there to the national grid. Multiple layers are available, such as wind speed, wave height, bathymetry, and sediments. The map also displays the location of current offshore windfarms and shows where new windfarms are being considered for development. One important contributor to the tool is the Copernicus programme, which provides free and open marine data that are integrated in the different layers, and that consists of satellite images, models and data visualisations.

The results

The MSP Challenge Simulation Platform provides, on a free and open-source basis, an engaging tool for students, professionals and policy makers to better understand basic electrical engineering in offshore wind power development and the spatial implications of it. The Dutch Government has been continuously investing in the development and application of novel simulation and game technologies since the international conference on Maritime Spatial Planning held in Lisbon in 2011. The current simulation platform is the result of a fourth design iteration.

Because the MSP Challenge makes use of GIS data, the platform provides direct feedback while testing out different scenarios. Thanks to the platform, policy makers can now engage stakeholders in a pragmatic way. The multi-user system allows to create shared servers to work in a co-creative setting with multiple stakeholders at a time, both during live and online sessions. In addition to the North Sea, the platform also covers the Baltic Sea, the Clyde Marine Region, and the Adriatic Sea.

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The Cyprus Audit Office

The Cyprus Audit Office is an independent State Authority of the Republic of Cyprus. It is responsible for auditing the accounts of the central government, ministries, local administrations, and national public organisations. The mission of the Office is to conduct quality financial, performance and compliance audits in the wider public sector for the purpose of public reporting, thus enhancing transparency and accountability. The Office contributes to the efficient and effective management of public resources, reducing the mismanagement of public funds and corruption.

The challenge

Cypriot coastline and beaches are the habitats of many animal and vegetal species, some of which are considered as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Every year, beaches bring millions of tourists to Cyprus. Indeed, tourism represents a vital source for the country’s economy, but its substantial increase, with the creation of new touristic infrastructures, could also pose threats to the island’s biodiversity.

In 2016, to ensure effective coastal management, the Office conducted an audit to evaluate the measures implemented by the competent authorities to protect the coastline and contain the effects of the potential threats related to mass tourism and illegal activities. The audit’s goal was to understand how coastal protection measures are implemented, to identify illegal structures in the national Coastal Protected Zone, and to detect activities that do not comply with the National Beach Usage Plan. To do this, the Audit Office needed reliable data that could help them in picturing the evolution of the coastline and assess the effects of tourism and man-made activities on the island.

The satellite solution

To realise the Audit, the Office submitted questionnaires to local authorities, realised visits to collect in-situ data, and interviewed public officers and non-governmental organisations. Moreover, the Cyprus Audit Office relied on GIS technology to obtain information on land ownership and protected coastal zones. This information was needed to assess the potential effects of illegal buildings and mass tourism on coastal erosion.

Satellite imagery from multiple sources, including Sentinel-2 images, Google Earth and orthophotos from the Department of Lands and Surveys, was used to map the entire island and to draw a temporal perspective of the evolution of the coastline. The satellite images used by the Audit Office were retrieved by the digitised cadastral maps developed by the Cyprus Department of Lands and Surveys and made freely available online through a dedicated portal.

The results

Thanks to the GIS technology, the Audit Office was able to assess the evolution of coastal erosion and of illegal building sprawl during         the  last years, and to estimate the potential economic impacts on the long run.

The use of satellite data provided the Audit Office with a broad vision of the geographic area surrounding the island, allowing it to perform a broad inspection of the coastline, while drastically reducing the time and costs dedicated to the audit. Indeed, in-situ observations were only necessary to validate contrasting data and information.

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The Andalusian Aquaculture Technology Centre

The Andalusian Aquaculture Technology Centre (CTAQUA) is a non-for-profit private foundation based in Cádiz, Spain. Ever since it was founded in 2007, CTAQUA has developed multiple research projects and training in the field of aquaculture, addressing both the research community and the private sector. CTAQUA facilitates collaboration between aquaculture farmers, feed companies and other industry-related enterprises, academia and regional governmental institutions engaged in aquaculture activities.

The challenge

The south-western Iberian coastal area, shared between Portugal and Spain, has a common background and tradition in aquaculture. Being aquaculture a major growing economic activity in the region, overexploitation of coastal waters is a tangible risk. The consequence is that aquaculture directly endangers biodiversity. Planning aquaculture activities in advance is fundamental to improve the conservation status of coastal areas and their profitability, while promoting and implementing sustainable production methodologies and systems for a more efficient management of harvesting areas. Aquaculture planning involves multiple stakeholders, such as researchers, NGOs, regional and local fishery authorities, and other economic actors. Finding the right tool to set up ad hoc policies and favour the dialogue among all these actors represents a need and a challenge at the same time.

The satellite solution

Between 2017 and 2020, CTAQUA, the Andalusian Agricultural and Fisheries Management Agency (AGAPA), the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) and the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) are working together to identify the interactions between aquaculture and the environment in the South-Western Iberian coast, specifically in the Alentejo-Algarve-Andalusia area.

Within the framework of the Interreg project AQUA&AMBI, that aims at strengthening cross-border mechanisms for the maintenance and recovery of biodiversity and ecosystem services, the three organisations developed a geographic information system (GIS) to monitor saline and aquaculture production areas. The GIS portal integrates multiple data, including Copernicus Sentinel-2 multispectral data on water temperature provided by the Spanish and Portuguese National Geographic Institutes, and in-situ data. The portal includes a cartographic map created by the project partners that functions as a zoning and regulatory instrument for entrepreneurs and administrations in the planning of economic activities within the aquaculture sector.

The results

Spatial planning based on satellite data provided an understanding of the south-western Iberian territory. It allowed for the identification of different administrative uses of the coastal zones for aquaculture activities, the assessment of suitable spaces for aquaculture development, and the compatibility with other sustainable economic activities in protected natural areas.

One of the users at local level of the GIS tool was the Andalusian authority for agriculture and fishery, responsible for the planning of aquaculture activities in the protected area in the Bay of Cadiz. The spatial planning through GIS allowed the identification of the different uses of the Bay to assess which zones should be dedicated to aquaculture and how to build synergies with other activities taking place in the bay, such as salt extractions, environmental protection initiatives and tourism.

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