D-ICE is a French SME working on technological solutions to diminish the impact of boats on the environment.

The company is based in Nantes, with a team of 26 people, and operates in the fields of routing, clean energy and safety at sea. D-ICE assists ship owners and operators to find solutions to diminish their impact on the environment. In particular, they work on assessing the interest of adding wind-assisted ship propulsion systems onboard merchant ships.

The challenge

More than 3% of global carbon dioxide emissions can be attributed to ocean-going vessels, which is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from over 205 million cars. Moreover, boats powered by fuel also cause noise pollution that negatively affects marine life.

The carbon dioxide emissions of ships are directly proportional to fuel consumption and speed. To reduce their environmental impact and to align with the objectives of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the shipping industry is looking for solutions to reduce fuel consumption by using wind-assisted propulsion systems.

D-ICE decided to create systems to help ship operators to assess the interest of adding wind-assisted ship propulsion systems onboard their ships.

The satellite solution

Since 2020, D-ICE developed the SATORI software, an online service that estimates the fuel consumption of ships on specific routes. SATORI is particularly interesting to evaluate the performances of wind-assisted ship propulsion systems.

Initially funded by the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS), SATORI relies on data from Copernicus satellites to acquire information on weather, wind, waves and sea currents on sea routes. Those historical data are made freely available by the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service through two products: the Global Waves Reanalysis Waverys and the Global Ocean Physics Reanalysis.

The data are used to calculate ships’ motions and interactions with the environment. Indeed, the evaluation of wind, waves and currents is necessary for the model to calculate the speed of ships and their engine power between two points at a specific time.

The results

SATORI is built for shipowners, naval architects and providers of propulsion systems. Customers access SATORI through a web portal, where they can enter the ships’ data and their potential speed according to different directions and winds.

Users can perform statistical weather routing studies on the online interface, choose a route and the time periods on which they wish to assess the ships’ average consumption, and then create their own data visualisation to obtain the required forecasts (environmental conditions to be encountered, fuel saving associated with wind-assisted propulsion, ship motions).

SATORI has been already used by some notable skippers. For example, Total and Z&B are today using the software on some of their ships, while AYRO and Chantiers de l’Atlantique rely on it to design wind-assisted ship propulsion systems.

The same algorithm which powers SATORI was used to perform a study for the design team of the new Banque Populaire trimaran after their boat capsized during the Route du Rhum yacht race in 2018.

In 2021, the boat Maître Coq won the greatest sailing race around the world, solo, non-stop and without assistance: the Vendée Globe. D-ICE provided the skipper, Yannick Bestaven, with a software that contained a database of historical routes.

This database was computed with the same algorithm as SATORI. This tool helped him to confirm his routes’ choices and to eventually win the race.

“Thanks to this new technology, the shipping community can now validate business models around the new targets of the International Maritime Organization and take action to reduce greenhouse gases emissions globally”. Sylvain Faguet, D-ICE
Engineering.

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MedAssist.online

MedAssist.online is a Dutch company founded in 2015 based in the Port of Rotterdam. Its mission is to provide the best possible medical care to people in areas where medical assistance is not available. Originally, the company provided exclusively physical medical training to maritime officers and captains, and it then moved towards a more innovative path to support vessel crews.

The Challenge

Providing medical support to people in remote areas is very challenging. Telemedicine has proved to be a game-changer in multiple occasions, especially during medical emergencies at sea. Ship crews can spend weeks far out at sea, often thousands of miles away from the nearest shore. At sea, medical emergencies happen daily, and regular ships have no doctor on board.

Just in Europe, every year there are on average 21.000 telemedicine consultations at sea, and this number is constantly increasing. Depending on the medical need, vessels are often forced to change their plans, diverting their course, and extending the duration of their trip. To provide crews with better and faster care, an additional telemedicine tool was needed.

The Satellite Solution

The  meets the need of ship crews to get medical assistance at any moment and anywhere. It relies on satellite communication and a patented Two-Ways-Augmented-Reality (TWAR) technology. The Live App is available for download on any mobile device on Play Store and App Store. Satellite ship-to-shore-to-ship communication provides an essential feature to make the Live app work at sea. With support from ESA and the Netherlands Space Office, the TWAR technology (with two-way audio/video feed) was optimised for reliable use over satellite connections. Once they download the app, users can create their profile and require live assistance. They can also access tutorials or create new ones in case of specific accidents. Using TWAR, the application combines two video feeds — from and to the ship and the doctor — into one identical ‘shared reality’, visible to both the doctor and the ship’s officer.

Unlike in usual video calls, participants can work together from the same perspective. TWAR allows the medical professional to instruct, point out, guide and coach the ship’s officer as if the two were physically in the same place: they can examine and treat a patient as if the doctor were on board, or the doctor can show to the officer what to do. The officers on board will see the hands of the doctor superimposed on their owns on the screen and will be guided in their movements live.

The results

The Live App helps crews or people in remote locations to get the best possible medical care anytime and anywhere. It also reduces the human and financial costs of medical emergencies at sea.

The app has been tested by both KLM and onshore medical staff and has already been positively evaluated by several shipping companies. Currently, the app is being used all over Europe, especially by Dutch and German shipping companies. Soon, it will be also available for users in Asia and America. Considering the importance of providing medical assistance to people in remote areas, the team at MedAssist is planning to tailor the app for other contexts, such as rural areas, where connectivity still represents a challenge.

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.

Blue Thread

Blue Thread S.r.l. is a small Italian company based in Rome and founded in 2019. The company’s mission is to develop technological solutions for the maritime and nautical world. By using a multi-technological approach that integrates different knowhows, the company aims at responding to the multiple challenges that the maritime domain faces, from improving navigation to monitoring the access to ports and remote marine areas.

Blue Thread collaborates with international and national research centres, such as the University of Tor Vergata in Rome and the Istituto Superiore Mario Boella in Turin. In addition, Blue Thread also developed a fleet monitoring application prototype for sailing races with a wide range of features, such as an optimised start strategy, a lay line determination, and a racecourse registration.

The challenge

According to the FAO’s definition, Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are marine geographical areas that need greater protection than the surrounding waters for biodiversity conservation or fishery management purposes. In its geographic diversity, Italy counts around 29 MPAs across the country. Each of these areas is classified according to the protection needed, based on natural, geomorphological, physical, scientific, economic, and educational relevance.

Monitoring and safeguarding MPAs is a complicated task for the local authorities responsible for these areas, due to their extension and to the financial resources required to protect their biodiversity. When it comes to MPAs that are touristic destinations, like the MPA in Porto Cesareo in the Apulia region, monitoring the flux of tourists, their activities, and behaviours, becomes quite challenging.

The satellite solution

In 2019, Blue Thread developed Blue Discovery, a GNSS-based mobile app free to download and available for IOS and Android. The app is complemented by a web-GIS and an Operational Portal that could be managed by the MPA authorities. This was the case for the MPA of Porto Cesareo, that tested the app during the Summers of 2020 and 2021. Blue Discovery allows visitors to get information on the rules to access and visit the marine protected area, on the itineraries to follow, and on the spots of interest in the area surrounding the MPA. The app relies on GNSS technology embedded in smartphones and allows the authorities responsible for managing the MPA to have reliable information and increased position accuracy on the visitors of the areas through the Operational Portal.

A crowdsourcing function of the app allows visitors to send to the area’s managing authority short reports on the sighting of protected species or on environmental crimes. Visitors can upload on the app geo-referenced photos of what they see with the time on which they took them, together with additional details to help the local authorities to intervene in real-time. Furthermore, Blue Discovery provides visitors with the opportunity to request, pay, and issue permits for activities to be carried out in the MPA directly on the app.  All the data collected by the visitors are immediately visualised by the authority on the web portal, which becomes a database of events happening in the protected area that can be monitored by the authorities and used for reporting.

The results

The app allowed the authorities of the marine protected area of Porto Cesareo to monitor the flow of visitors and to keep track of their position in the area. The Blue Discovery app helped the authority of Porto Cesareo to optimise the time and resources deployed to patrol the area, and to validate the fares paid by the visitors and their permits.

Blue Discovery is constantly under development to better support the authorities in charge of managing marine natural areas. Today, Blue Thread is planning to include Earth observation imagery in the app, with the aim to provide additional support for navigation routes, thanks to the implementation of ad hoc ship detection maps. Lastly, Blue Thread is planning to include in the app the Galileo Commercial Authentication Service (CAS), that will provide authenticated, certified positioning, to avoid privacy and legal issues between the visitors and the MPA’s authorities.

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.

OceanMind

OceanMind is a not-for-profit organisation that powers marine enforcement and compliance to protect the ocean’s ability to provide for human wellbeing. OceanMind aims at supporting governmental authorities and food suppliers, mainly seafood buyers, by combining maritime expertise and knowledge with advanced technologies. Originally launched in 2014 as the “Project Eyes on the Seas”, resulting from a collaboration between the Satellite Applications Catapult and Pew Charitable Trusts, OceanMind became a new independent not-for-profit organisation in 2018.

The challenge

Overfishing is one of the main factors causing the decline of the ocean’s wildlife populations. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), between 2017 and 2018, 1/3 of global fish stocks are classified as overfished and no longer biologically sustainable. In Europe, about 38% of the fish in the North-East Atlantic and the Baltic Sea is overfished. In the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, this percentage reaches 87% in total. Aggressive and destructive fishing methods are indeed one of the principal threats to biodiversity and habitats. For example, Fish Aggregation Devices (FADs) dramatically increase catch rates and reduce the resource and effort required per catch. Nevertheless, they also result in higher levels of bycatch, particularly of vulnerable species. In addition, often FADs are lost, adding to the marine waste problem. Validate the fishing methods for seafood suppliers is relevant today to provide the consumers with a sustainable product.

The satellite solution

In 2017, the OceanMind team developed an independent validation of source, legality, and fishing methods. The methodology merges a wide variety of data, including Vessel Monitoring System (VSM) data, Automatic Identification System (AIS) data, fishing vessels’ authorisations, and oceanographic and geospatial data derived from satellite images collected through multiple sources, including private companies as Spire, and Earthwatch, that represent the main validation tool for OceanMind.

The output of this data analysis is a risk assessment report delivered by OceanMind to their partners, mainly seafood suppliers and food retailers, to support traceability and inform their buying decisions. The multi-layered information analysis on the seafood supply chain allows users to verify the claims of the fishing practices made by a supplier and provides information on any suspected illegal behaviour.

The results

OceanMind developed its first report on FAD fishing methods for the British food retailer Sainsbury’s to validate the fishing methods adopted by the vessels in their tuna supply chain. OceanMind and Sainsbury’s are working together to ensure a long term and independent feedback mechanism to validate the legality and responsibility of tuna suppliers from the moment of capture. This approach can impact significantly fishing techniques and could serve as a case study for other supply chains such as agriculture.

Leveraging on OceanMind data and assessment, Sainsbury’s farmed fish sources are today 100% certified, and 82.3% of their wild-caught fish and seafood is considered as sustainable and environmentally friendly by the UK Marine Stewardship Council standards. The 2019 estimations from Sainsbury’s, highlighted that verified FAD-free tuna represents 90% of Sainsbury’s canned tuna offer and approximately 9% of their total fish sale.

Vake

Vake is a Norwegian company specialised in maritime safety and vessel traffic. The company was founded in 2019. It supports governmental agencies to monitor and survey national waters, offshore asset owners to detect dark vessels and reduce potential infrastructure threats and ship insurers to validate and verify the true chain of events.

The challenge

Back in 2008, the European Commission defined maritime domain awareness as the understanding of the activities associated with the maritime area that could impact the safety, security, economy and environment of the European Union and Member States. Acquiring a complete understanding of what happens at sea is relevant today due to the increased maritime traffic and activities in our oceans that are generating multiple threats to core sectors of the economy and to the breaching national security of coastal countries.

Illegal fishing, smuggling, and environmental crimes are the main challenges to be overcome. Detecting and identifying potential criminal vessels is key to filling information gaps and preventing illegal behaviours at sea. Technology already supports governmental authorities and businesses in spotting illicit activities, via drones, airborne sensors, and cameras, but satellite data can help in monitoring wide areas validating the in-situ measurements.

The satellite solution

To support governmental authorities and maritime economic actors, VAKE developed a dashboard that combines two core features: area monitoring and vessel tracking. The platform allows users to detect ships by using data from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellites and machine learning, cross-referenced with other vessel monitoring solutions, such as the Automatic Identification System (AIS) signal, that relies on GNSS technology.

The dashboard allows users to select their area of interest and a temporal frame to obtain data on the ships there located, such as their size and direction. Users can access the images and information in the form of an interactive web report or download the data as a report file. In addition, the dashboard allows for the detection of dark and potentially illegal ships. Users can monitor their area of interest to verify if suspicious vessels are sailing with their AIS signal off, which can be an indicator for potentially illegal activities. By highlighting when this happens, it is possible to prevent these actions or retrace the route of criminals to determine if an action just happened or is it going to happen.

The results

VAKE’s dashboard is helping national authorities to improve sea monitoring, especially for the implementation of fishing analysis, and to prevent and prosecute environmental crimes. The algorithms that power the VAKE platform can also find additional applications to detect human trafficking, smuggling and seawater emissions.

Currently, VAKE is working with the Netherlands Coast Guard to complement and improve their maritime situational awareness. The collaboration with Vake allows the Coast Guard to extract insights on maritime activities from satellite data covering a wider portion of sea than the area they currently monitor. In the next future, VAKE and the Netherlands Coast Guard will combine automating alerts and collection of insights across multiple types of sensors, that will be key assets for maritime authorities.

VAKE is also working on expanding their geographical reach, including North and South America, and Australia. Furthermore, to provide users with night images, VAKE is currently developing products that include SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite imagery.

The Tanzania Fisheries Research Institute

The Tanzania Fisheries Research Institute (TAFIRI) was established in 1980s to promote, coordinate, and conduct research on fisheries in Tanzania. TAFIRI operates under the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries.

TAFIRI is one of the partners of the East Africa Marine Consortium, created within the GMES and Africa initiative. The consortium is led by the Mauritius Oceanographic Institute (MOI) and it includes the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, the Institute of Fisheries and Marine Sciences of Madagascar, the Seychelles Meteorological Authority, and the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association. The project implemented by the consortium aims at seizing the biological and physical state and dynamics of the ocean, fishing grounds, marine ecosystems for the regional seas, coastal vulnerability, and sea state forecasts, to support marine and coastal management activities and adaptation measures in the East Africa Region.

The challenge

A quarter of Tanzania’s population heavily depends on fishery for economic purposes and food. Fishery contributes for about 1.4% of the national GDP and represents an important source of work, employing over 180,000 people, and 19,000 in fish farming.

Due to climate change-related effects and overfishing, coastal fishery is slowly declining, threatening local communities and the economy. Furthermore, pelagic fish stocks are mostly unexploited, due to very limited means and tools, and to a lack of knowledge on how to locate fishing grounds in offshore waters. Artisanal fishers are mostly dependent on inshore fishing grounds and would need support to access profitable fishing areas offshore.

The satellite solution

Within the framework of the GMES and Africa programme, TAFIRI started a collaboration with local fishing communities in the areas of Fundo (Pemba), Nungwi (Zanzibar), Kipumbwi (Tanga), and Kilindoni (Mafia). The aim was to raise awareness on the uses of EO and GNSS data to identify profitable fishing areas, with the final objective of helping local communities to optimise their resources.

TAFIRI, together with local fishery authorities, trained more than 100 ring-net fishers on the use of satellite navigation to track local fishing grounds and develop new safe fishing techniques. Fishermen were given mobile phones with a dedicated app to collect fisheries information. The app includes an SMS alert system, thanks to which the fishermen receive the coordinates of potential fishing zones, as well as data on water quality and temperature derived from Copernicus Sentinel-2. Once leaving the coast, fishermen activate the GNSS signal and check on the app the vessel’s course to reach the identified fishing station. During the trip, fishermen can also include new information, thus validating the satellite data and including additional information collected during their navigation.

The results

The use of satellite data to improve fishery techniques and to guarantee a sustainable fishery is bringing a series of benefits to local fishermen and responsible authorities. The information captured is used by the government to improve fisheries management plans for small and medium species (e.g., sardines) along with large pelagic fish (Tuna and tuna like species) in the coastal waters of Tanzania. The system based on EO and GNSS data helps reducing fishing pressure on inshore waters and provides reliable information to fishermen.

Also, the system is encouraging artisanal fishermen to adopt innovative techniques that could reduce fishing costs and make fishery a safer job. Indeed, the app guarantees to the fishermen the possibility of working without risking their lives due to outdated maps or inadequate data on water and weather conditions. The use of satellite technology to optimise fishery is preserving the marine ecosystem and is helping to implement new policies and fishing strategies for the development of the country, while improving the livelihood of the fishers.

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.

The Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate

The Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate (Inspectie Leefomgeving en Transport – ILT) is the supervising authority of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. Its mission is to enforce compliance with the law in multiple spheres of action, such as the use of high-risk materials and products, water, soil, and constructions, rail and road traffic, aviation, and shipping. Every year, ILT identifies possible risk areas where to intervene. Furthermore, the ILT Special Intelligence and Investigation Service can probe in case of criminal events that might endanger society, such as soil contamination or the use of hazardous substances.

The challenge

Every year, Dutch seaports handle over 550 million tons of goods, making the country a central shipping hub worldwide. Since 2020, the international regulations imposed by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) require seafaring vessels to meet lower emission standards. Indeed, shipping contributes heavily to air pollution, due to Nitrogen oxides (NOx) and Sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions. Such emissions lead to a growing concentration of pollutants and particulate matter in the atmosphere. The ILT constantly monitors compliance with international rules for the Netherlands, especially observing emissions from ships. However, physically inspecting every ship coming to a Dutch port is practically impossible, and post-fact detection of noncompliant behavior outside of ports could be challenging.

The satellite solution

Since 2020, the ILT started to develop a monitoring system to track NOx emissions and identify incompliant ships. The first step was the implementation of a

study in cooperation with the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) and the universities of Leiden and Wageningen. Both entities developed an algorithm to measure ship pollution, that integrates EO data from TROPOMI (TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument) with traditional monitoring means, as in-situ observations. The algorithm combined ship location information in the hours before and up to the time when the TROPOMI satellite pass over the area, with data on wind direction and speed in the high seas, and with satellite data on weather and air quality. Ship length and speed, together with EO data, helped the ILT in projecting the potential dispersion of pollutants by single ships.

The Inspectorate monitored over 185 ships, evaluating their nitrogen dioxide emissions during ideal weather conditions. This data was then combined with ship location information in the hours before and up to the TROPOMI satellite overpass, and with wind direction and speed in the high seas. Ship length and speed together with EO data can help in projecting the potential dispersion of pollutants by single ships. In this way, the NO2 data identified are then compared with real ships emissions to verify if they are adhering to the international shipping regulations or not.

The results

The study showed that through EO data, it was possible to identify a heavier plume of NO2 from big and fast ships. The results of the study opened a new way of spotting ship emissions and identifying uncompliant ships.

The integration of satellite data in the ILT daily job reduced the load of work of the inspectors. The use of EO technology allows ILT in saving time and targets its resources on ad hoc inspections on those ships that are potentially uncompliant. In this way, ILT contributes not only to ensuring the adherence of the Netherlands to international legislation about shipping emissions, but also to the global emissions monitoring.