Projects

Marine ecosystems are exposed to the impact of a number of multiple stressors, resulting from multiple drivers, also acting in different areas. A non-exhaustive list of co-existing pressures includes climate change (e.g. warming and acidification), pollution (litter, NHS), maritime traffic, exploitation of living and non living resources, oligo/eutrophication, invasive species. The need to assess and address the increasing presence of coexisting environmental threats, which propagate in space and time across political boundaries, calls for transactional coordinated actions based on evidence-rooted common understanding. There is a clear need for sharing of data, procedures, information and knowledge, in order to support multilevel governance and shared spatial planning. At the same time there is a need to improve observation and assessment capabilities, by integration of existing systems, development of short term forecast systems, and incorporation of emerging technologies.

SHAREMED will increase the capability of managing authorities and scientific community to assess and address hazards related to environmental threats by:

1) Providing frameworks for collection, comparison, integration, harmonisation of existing experiences and increasing the possibility to find, access and use existing information.

2) Studying and testing procedures, multilevel agreements, protocols to standardise and produce a shared database and products to be used to assess environmental health and environmental hazards.

3) Improve observation and assessment capabilities by: defining cooperation practises, integration of existing infrastructure in joint transnational systems; defining and implementing a relocatable forecast system; and incorporation of emerging technologies, with particular reference to operational systems and biological properties.

The project will capitalise on knowledge provided by previous projects and ongoing programs, and will contribute to the definition of gap analysis, best practises, long term strategies and an action plan for assessing and addressing environmental threats in the Mediterranean Sea. The approach towards reaching the project goals will be applied throughout the duration of the project through active participation of all Project Partners in all Work Packages.