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Interoperable data management
and maritime spatial planning

Research themes
The Tools4MSP Geoplatform is a collaborative web-based tool for the co-production, management, and sharing of information resources and scientific knowledge related to coastal and marine areas, with the aim, in particular, of supporting Maritime Spatial Planning

The Maritime Spatial Planning aims to ensure the efficient, safe, and sustainable use of the resources of our seas and oceans, to foster the non-conflictual development of traditional and emerging economic sectors (such as energy production from renewable marine sources), to protect the environment by reducing anthropogenic impacts and identifying new protected areas, to promote the restoration of degraded ecosystems or habitats, and to support cross-border cooperation between countries on sustainable ocean management.

The European Union has adopted a specific Framework Directive in this regard (No. 89/2014), which is referred to in all major policy instruments concerning the sea, such as the Strategy for a Sustainable Blue Economy. CNR-ISMAR has been following this process since 2013, through a long series of national and European research projects pertaining to different Programs, collaborating with other CNR Institutes, with national and international Academic and Research institutions, and interacting with the vast Community involved in MSP processes. Since 2020 CNR-ISMAR has been supporting the National Competent Authority on MSP (Ministry of sustainable infrastructures and mobility) in the preparation of the Plans required by the EU Directive.

To effectively support such decision-making and planning processes, it is essential to promote pathways for the sharing of scientific and non-scientific information on the environment, sea uses, and ongoing trends, and the creation of open and interoperable knowledge frameworks and data infrastructures capable of making such information accessible to all, not just insiders. This need is further reaffirmed and fostered by two ongoing European and international processes: the Digital Twin of the Ocean, which is a further step toward high-resolution, multi-dimensional digitization of the marine environment; and the UN Ocean Decade of Science for Sustainable Development, which identifies transparency of information as one of the main goals to support participatory decision-making processes.

ISMAR responds to these goals through the creation and online publication of multiple infrastructures for sharing its data, which are by their nature multidisciplinary and technologically complex. Examples include the Geoportal for spatial marine data (e.g., geological, geomorphological, bathymetric, geognostic, and biological data) and its associated metadata catalogue, systems for sharing tidal and wave forecasting outputs, ISMAR’s contribution to the Copernicus Marine Service, the CIGNO-BSA Geoportal for sharing georeferenced historical cartography from the Library of Adriatic Studies, and the Tools4MSP platform dedicated specifically to supporting maritime spatial planning processes. ISMAR infrastructures are constantly evolving and also aim to orient our institute towards the paradigm of open science that can be summarized in the principle of FAIR data: an acronym meaning searchable, accessible, interoperable and reusable data.