The last few decades have been marked by the growing importance of maritime issues, both socio-economic and environmental.
At sea, new activities are developing at an impressive rate: utilisation of renewable marine energies, deep-sea mining, utilisation of marine biodiversity for pharmaceuticals or cosmetics, seaweed cultivation…
It is becoming increasingly clear that in response to this ongoing innovation, there is a need to innovate in terms of the regulation and planning of these activities. These developments raise new and difficult questions concerning the humanities: political sciences, geography, sociology, law, must address these new questions and establish the academic foundations for solving them.
The role of SML is to ensure communication between science and decision making. This role of “mediator” is currently rather poorly fulfilled by both researchers and decision-makers, each believing that it is up to the other to make the path that separates them.
For certain fields, due to a lack of satisfactory academic response, SML conducts or aptly supports research and innovation.
The Blue Economy development presupposes the rational and sustainable exploitation of marine resources and maritime space. The starting point is of course the existing situation: which activity exploits what resources, where and when?
However, answers are still very incomplete and rather inadequate: not only is little information available, but much of this information is provided by the users themselves, with the level of detail that suits them. It is often quite limited.
Thus, even if public access to AIS data is wider, these data are provided voluntarily (AIS can be stopped at any time, or false positions can be injected in, …) and often incomplete: at best, they indicate the presence of a vessel and its type, but its complete description of the activity is usually not provided (the vessel is simply in transit, fishing, if so with what gear?).
SML has developed and continues to develop with her partners within the framework of its “SESAM” project, monitoring information analysis services that enable detailed mapping of activities (nature, spatio-temporal density, etc.). The system can use virtually any data (active or passive radar, AIS, GSM trajectography, etc.).
The analysis of maritime activities has many applications: regulatory compliance monitoring, management of maritime and security risks, defence and safety, cumulative impact assessment, etc.). SML is focusing efforts on using this information to support integrated approaches, including MSP.
In collaboration with the Université de Bretagne Occidentale (UBO/IUEM), and within the framework of the CIFRE scheme, SML is conducting a doctoral thesis (2017-2019). Its aim is to study and evaluate how the mapping of maritime activities, based on the analysis of surveillance information, can contribute to the implementation of Maritime Spatial Planning and its related policies.
This research aims to contribute to the improvement of spatialised knowledge of maritime activities and methodological advances useful for decision-making at sea.
Two main work phases have been identified at this stage: