Maritime transport plays an important role in the world trade and economics development. In Europe the “motorways on the sea” concept has been an important issue since the launch of the EU Transport white paper (EC 2001). An enclosed sea such as the Mediterranean is particularly vulnerable to ship-associated pressures due to a high-volume of shipping routes, long history of use, and sensitive shallow and deep-sea habitats. Negative impacts associated to maritime traffic include biodiversity loss, introduction of alien species, pollution, marine litter and underwater noise among others. The monitoring and characterization of the spatio-temporal patterns of marine traffic constitutes an important element for the effective management and assessment of environmental impacts of this activity. Monitoring of real-time ship locations can be achieved through the Automated Identification System (AIS). The AIS is a VHF transmitter that broadcast the ship position, as well as additional information (eg. timestamp, speed, heading, boat type). All ocean-going commercial traffic >300 gross tons, or carrying more than 165 passengers, as well as tug/tows, are required to carry AIS transmitters (IALA 2004). In addition, the rest of the ships are able to carry on these transmitters on a voluntary basis. In this work we present the development of an information system designed to store, manage, analyze and visualize historical AIS data based on open-source components. We analyse such data to assess and map multiple anthropogenic pressures. For example, segmented regression on speed distribution is carried out to identify and map fishing activity, whereas neighbourhood statistics and GIS methods are used to generate underwater noise maps. We will illustrate these products within the context of risk assessment on marine ecosystems at the Western Mediterranean Sea. The information provided in this study can be incorporated into Decision Support Systems (DSS) for supporting the implementation of European and national policies for the assessment of environmental impacts and the interactions among human activities as well.

1. David March, Sonia Gómara, Joaquín Tintoré
HUMAN IMPACTS OF THE
MOTORWAYS OF THE SEA
EGU 2014, Vienna, Austria

2. Societal needs Technological development Science-based tools
INTEGRATED ASSESSMENT OF SHIP-BASED ACTIVITIES

3. SHIP-BASED ACTIVITIES: BLUE GROWTH
Cruise tourism
Passenger ferry
Fisheries Recreational boating
ShippingOil & gas

4. PRESSURES ON MARINE ECOSYSTEMS
Ship-based activities have the potential
to affect any of the eleven qualitative
descriptors targeted by the Marine
Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD)
Yatch anchor over seagrass Oil spill Overfishing
E.g. Descriptors 1, 6 E.g. Descriptors 8, 9 E.g. Descriptors 3, 4

5. Fishermen complain against cruise
ships mooring over fishing grounds
Civil society complains against coastal
development
Deployment of oceanographic buoys
taking into account shipping lines and
fishing grounds to avoid interactions
COMPETITION FOR MARITIME SPACE

6. SOCIETAL CHALLENGES
Sustainable developmet
Integrated Maritime Policy
Stakeholders involvement
MSP Directive (proposal)
Ecosystem based management
MSFD Directive
MSFD TIMELINE2012 2020
http://www.msfd.eu/

7. WATCH MARINE TRAFFIC
FROM A NEW PERSPECTIVE

8. MONITORING MARINE TRAFFIC
WHO IS REQUIRED TO CARRY AIS?
http://www.marineelectronicsjournal.com/
Spatio-temporal patterns of ship-based activities
All ocean-going commercial traffic >300 gross tons
Ferries carrying more than 165 passengers
Tug & Tows
EU fishing fleet > 15 m

9. DATA ACQUISITION
Install your own antenna
National port authorities
Regional conventions (eg. HELCOM)
Global providers (eg. MarineTraffic)
SOCIB’s AIS antenna and spatial coverage

10. THE SCALE ALSO MATTERS
Shipping intensity
Recreational boat anchoring
Ibiza island (NW Mediterranean)
Global scale
Regular lines
Anchoring for few hours/days

11. DATA MANAGEMENT
Data cleaning: duplicates, invalid codes, …
Geospatial filters: point or track on land, …
Geospatial processing: Point to Track
Calculate metrics: speed, turn angle, …
Data storage: spatial databases
Open source geospatial technologies

12. DATA-INTENSTIVE SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

13. RISK OF INTRODUCTION OF
SHIP-TRANSPORTED ALIEN SPECIES
Global shipping network
Keller et al. 2011
Relative probability index (Chan et al. 2013)
Distribution of alien species
Molnar et al. 2008
+ +
SPATIAL MODELLING
Port environmental distance
Keller et al. 2011
Exponential decay function (Ban et al. 2010)

14. UNDERWATER NOISE
Source levels per boat type
Hatch et al. 2008
++
Navigation time per grid cell Transmission loss function
Erbe et al. 2012
TL = dB – 15 x log10 (dist)
SPATIAL MODELLING
Propagates cell by cell using a moving window
approach (March et al. in prep)

15. FISHING BEHAVIOUR
Fishing activity
Define fishing and navigating states based on speed profile (‘vmstools’ package in R)

16. FISHING BEHAVIOUR
Two trawlers were sighted in north Mallorca

17. FISHING BEHAVIOUR
Density maps based on historical information illustrates the prevalence of fishing grounds

18. RECREATIONAL BOATING BEHAVIOUR
Sailing track with different states identified (e.g., sailing, motor, moored, operations)
Unsupervised algorithm using Expectation-Maximization Binary Clustering (‘EMbC ‘ package in R, Movelab)

19. APPLICATIONS: OCEANOGRAPHIC INFO ALONG TRACK
Temporal profile with wave height (red) and wind speed (blue) along a 5-day track
Interpolation algorithms incorporate multidimensional data using hydrographic models provided by SOCIB

20. APPLICATIONS: OIL SPILL RISK
‘Maverick Dos’ ran aground off the coast
of Formentera on 15 February 2012
Web-mapping application displays traffic density together with shoreline environmental sensitivity
‘Don Pedro’ sank after leaving Ibiza
harbour on 11 July 2007
www.gis.socib.es/sacosta

21. Planning glider campaign route
Marine traffic density is used by SOCIB to plan the route of underwater autonomous vehicles (AUV)
APPLICATIONS: OCEANOGRAPHIC RESEARCH

22. APPLICATIONS: CUMULATIVE PRESSURES
Based on Halpern et al. 2008

23. LIMITATIONS AND FURTHER WORKS
Combined monitoring Improve AIS coverage
Data-intensive tools
Open data availability
?

24. CONCLUSIONS
Automated Identification Systems and related technologies allows an
unprecedented opportunity to monitor ship-based activities
Data-intensive tools allow the discovery of new science-based
information
A better understanding of ship-based activity patterns will
contribute to support the implementation of MSFD and MSP

25. David March, Sonia Gómara, Joaquín Tintoré
THANK YOU FOR YOUR
ATTENTION!
david.march@uib.es
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Marc Torner
Pau Balaguer
Benjamín Casas
SOCIB Data Centre
Carla Murciano
Joan Albaigés
Rafael Sardà