Mediterranean Decision Support System for Marine Safety (MEDESS-4MS) – Jan 01, 2012

The Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Centre for the Mediterranean Sea (REMPEC) has the pleasure to announce that the Project Mediterranean decision support System for Marine Safety – MEDESS-4MS, has been approved within the framework of the project strategy of the European MED Programme and will start in February 2012, for three years. The project, which budget amounts more than six million Euros, is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund – ERDF.

MEDESS-4MS is dedicated to the maritime risks prevention and the strengthening of maritime safety related to oil spill pollution in the Mediterranean. The MEDESS-4MS project will be coordinated by the Department of Merchant Shipping (DMS) of Cyprus, and implemented by institutional and response agencies such as REMPEC,  and operational and forecasting centers based in Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Malta, Cyprus and Montenegro.

MEDESS-4MS thus aims at delivering a sustainable integrated operational multi model oil spill prediction service in the Mediterranean Sea, connected to existing monitoring platforms, using well established oil spill models, data from the Marine Core Services, and national ocean forecasting systems. To ensure the relevance and access to the tool, the project will test the service functionalities jointly with the key users, and deliver the integrated multi model oil spill prediction service with a unique access Web portal, with different subsystems and user profiles, multi-model data access and online interactive capabilities.

The project has been initiated through the Regional Workshop on Oil Spill Risk Assessment in the Mediterranean (MEDEXPOL 2011), organized by REMPEC and the Mediterranean Oil Industry Group (MOIG). The Workshop provided a set of recommendations (see report) from country representatives and the oil industry, for the development of an oil spill risk assessment methodology for the Mediterranean Sea.

By integrating and consolidating the existing service chains, based on the experience of operational response agencies such as REMPEC, the project will contribute to the improvement of maritime risks prevention and maritime safety.