The BlueBRIDGE project supports maritime spatial planning by providing data and analysis tools to help address key challenges. It develops rapid inventories of aquaculture facilities using earth observation imagery and tools to assess features in marine protected areas. For example, it identified over 8,600 fish cages in Greece and found that only 4.1% of coral reefs in the Bahamas are currently represented in marine protected areas. The standardized and repeatable analysis tools and data provided by BlueBRIDGE can help improve maritime spatial planning.

1. 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-Lawler
GRID-Arendal
Partners: FAO, GRID-Arendal, CLS, Engineering
Miles.macmillan-lawler@grida.no

2. The context
Maritime Spatial Planning
Competition 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

3. The challenges
Maritime spatial planning requires information on the location of
activities and how these relate to the environment and
management measures to inform decision making
Key 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

4. The challenges
Two key challenges being addressed by the BlueBRIDGE project
Develop rapid inventories of
Aquaculture facilities
Develop tools to assess features
in marine managed areas
(e.g. MPAs)
"Understanding how ecosystems of EU e-Infrastructures can boost Blue Growth", 11 January 2017, Brussels

5. 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

6. 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 tool
8699 fish cages for a total of 1 931 043 m²
56 ‘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

7. 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)

8. 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

9. 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

10. Next steps
Aquaculture pond detection
Indonesia
Mangrove detection
Indonesia
Integrate regional datasets
Europe/Caribbean
User data into protected area algorithm
MPAs / ecological features

11. Impact
Aquaculture Atlas
With little overhead, countries can identify the location of
aquaculture facilities to feed into management and MSP
Protected Areas
Countries 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

12. Thank You
Questions?