A brand new project Baltic SCOPE, with HELCOM participation, has been launched this week in Gothenburg, Sweden, coordinated by the Swedish for Marine and Water Management. As committed by the Ministers both for marine environment protection and spatial planning, in the regional for maritime spatial planning, most countries in the Baltic Sea region have intensified their efforts in developing marine spatial plans. The EU-funded project will contribute to this challenging task. The Baltic SCOPE project focuses on planning various marine-based activities such as shipping, fishing, offshore wind farming, and protected areas – more specifically, would such activities possibly co-exist or be separated in different parts of the marine areas. Importantly, the planning of the common sea areas is to be a coordinated effort. HELCOM will provide the SCOPE project with maritime GIS data, especially on ship movements in the region based on the HELCOM Automatic Identification System (AIS) network. The project is comprised of two case studies that build upon marine spatial planning processes that have already begun – one in the Baltic Sea southwest and the other between Estonia, Latvia and Sweden.Link: * * *Note for editors:According to the United Nations, maritime spatial planning (MSP) is “a public process of analyzing and allocating the spatial and temporal distribution of human activities in marine areas to achieve ecological, economic, and social objectives that usually have been specified through a political process.” Operational since 2010, the HELCOM-VASAB MSP ensures the regional coherence of any activities related to maritime spatial planning. The group is in charge of the Horizontal Action Spatial Planning within the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region. HELCOM Ministerial Meeting adopted in 2013 the Regional Baltic maritime spatial planning roadmap 2013–2020. * * *Since 2005, the Baltic region has had a system in place for gathering signals from all the Automatic Identification System (AIS) devices on ships – the HELCOM AIS network. This network provides real-time surveillance and statistics of the movement of ships, and is administered by the HELCOM , meeting annually since 2002. E-navigation uses such information to create a second generation of electronic services for enhanced safety and environmental performance– Check the 3 minute , ‘Baltic Sea shipping visualised’ * * *The Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission, usually referred to as , is an intergovernmental organization of the nine Baltic Sea coastal countries and the European Union working to protect the marine environment of the Baltic Sea from all sources of pollution and to ensure safety of navigation in the region. Since 1974, HELCOM has been the governing body of the ‘Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area’, more commonly known as the Helsinki Convention. * * *For more information, please contact:Hermanni BackerProfessional Secretary for Maritime, Response and Maritime Spatial PlanningHELCOMTel: +358 46 8509199Skype: helcom02E-mail: hermanni.backer(at)helcom.fiJohanna LaurilaInformation SecretaryHELCOMTel: +358 40 523 8988Skype: helcom70E-mail: johanna.laurila(at)helcom.fi
HELCOM will provide the Baltic SCOPE project with maritime GIS data, especially on ship movements based on the AIS network.
