EO Applications for Integrated Maritime and Territorial Spatial Planning in the Baltic (BalticAIMS)

European directives such as the Water Framework Directive and Marine Strategy Directive require member states to reach good ecological status in their coastal and inland waters. In the Baltic Sea this goal has not yet been achieved.

Spatial planning is a process that aims for the mitigation of the impacts of human activities and eventual improvement of the state of the environment through coordination and implementation of various practices and policies. Thus, one important action for the improvement of the state of the Baltic Sea is to improve the territorial and maritime spatial planning capabilities of the organizations operating in the area. Our goal is to develop an integrated data approach to obtain a full view of the essential processes of land and coastal water areas by combining various currently available satellite data sources, in situ observations and model predictions about dynamic landcover and water quality characteristics.

The BalticAIMS project will reach this goal through the following technical objectives:

1. Identify suitable environmental data and GIS materials.
2. Integrate, process and store thematic information.
3. Create the data access, visualization and analysis systems and tools.

The relevance of the Marine Spatial Planning techniques supported by EO to assess changes in environment due to agriculture, land use, aquaculture and changes in runoff have now been demonstrated for selected areas in Finland, Sweden, Germany and Poland. See the Service access page and D4.1 for more details.

The project has now concluded the service uptake and utility analysis and the definition of the roadmap for further service provision in a Baltic Sea wide scope (WP5). These results are reported in D5.1 Service Utility Report. The main results of the project are summarized in a newsletter.

The 1st phase of the project ended after the Final Review meeting held on April 19, 2023. In early September 2024 ESA granted the project new funding which allows us to extend the service development and provision for 18 months. We will follow the roadmap outlined in D5.1 Service Utility Report by adding more service areas, use case examples and technical elements. We will also demonstrate a service where ICEYE SAR data is used for sea ice monitoring in the Baltic. So, stay tuned for more updates!