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BalticWay
BalticWay project
Research funding agencies in the nine Baltic Sea countries together with the European Union have decided to fund the research proposal “BalticWay: The potential of currents for environmental management of the Baltic Sea maritime industry.” The project, coordinated by Tarmo Soomere, has been proposed by a consortium of 8 research groups from 6 Baltic Sea countries.
BalticWay: The potential of currents for environmental management of the Baltic Sea maritime industry
The proposal aims at a substantial decrease of marine-industry-induced environmental risks and impacts on bio-diversity, particularly on fragile ecosystems. The core objective is to develop a scientific platform for an innovative low-cost technology of environmental management of shipping, offshore, and coastal engineering activities. The technology will be applied to place dangerous activities in areas, an accident in which will have a minimum threat to vulnerable areas.
Our approach makes use of the existence of semi-persistent current patterns that considerably affect the properties of pollution propagation: the probability of transport of dangerous substances from different open sea areas to the vulnerable areas is largely different. For certain regions (areas of reduced risk) this probability is relatively small.
The location of areas of reduced risk will be established numerically and verified experimentally. A combination of the classical risk analysis with novel mathematical methods (such as inverse methods) will be applied to identify the persistence, properties, and potential effect of such areas, and to establish generic criteria for their existence. Based on existing results, we concentrate on the Gulf of Finland and the Darss Sill.
As a first step we consider the consequences of current-induced propagation of oil spills released from ships, aiming to route ships along the least dangerous paths, much like dangerous transports on land follow predefined routes.
Coordinator:
Tarmo Soomere, Institute of Cybernetics at Tallinn University of Technology
Partners:
Finnish Institute of Marine Research (Helsinki);
Department of Meteorology, University of Stockholm,
Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (Norrköping),
Danish Meteorological Institute (Copenhagen),
Institute for Coastal Research, GKSS Geesthacht,
Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel,
Laser Diagnostics Instruments (Tallinn)
BalticWay results presented at international conferences:
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The 10th International Marine Geological Conference
BalticWay information:
6th Study Conference on BALTEX