FORCOAST - Earth Observation services for Wild Fisheries, Oystergrounds Restoration and Bivalve Mariculture along European Coasts*

The European Blue Growth perspective suggests a larger share in global economic production
and food security appointed to the marine and coastal zone and an increase of marine and coastal
infrastructures   and   operations.   However,   this   growth   must   be   aligned   with   increasing
environmental constraints as well as complying and restoring regulations and frameworks. The
compliance of growth and sustainability requires the adoption of economically and ecologically
efficient behaviours, based on a wider incorporation of available information and knowledge from
the industry and citizens alike. Marine and coastal managers must make decisions to maintain
the social, economic, and ecological health of marine and coastal areas while operating, planning
and managing their activities at sea.
The European funded FORCOAST project represents a step forward in this direction by bringing
the coastal water quality and met-ocean information closer to the target sectors: wild fisheries,
oyster   grounds   restoration,   and   bivalve   mariculture.   FORCOAST   will   develop,   test   and
demonstrate, in operational mode, novel Copernicus-based downstream information services that
will  incorporate  and  combine  Copernicus  Marine  Environment  Monitoring  Service  (CMEMS),
Copernicus Land  Monitoring Service (CLMS) and  Climate Change Monitoring Service  (CMS),
local monitoring data and advanced modelling in the service.
FORCOAST will provide consistent high-resolution data products for coastal applications, based
on a standardized data processing scheme. The services of FORCOAST will provide managerial
tools (e.g decision support, user warnings, on-demand case study) built upon those products and
implemented through cloud-processing infrastructures.
FORCOAST will develop and provide those services in eight pilot service uptake sites covering
five  different  regional  waters  (North  Sea,  Baltic  Sea,  Mediterranean  Sea,  Black  Sea and  the
coastal Atlantic Ocean). Each of those pilots gathers marine information producers (eg. models),
providers (dissemination) and user (operating SMEs), to ensure inter-sectoral consistency.
The outcome of FORCOAST is a novel commercial service that will provide Copernicus-based
downstream  information  coastal  services  to  a  variety  of  stakeholders,  which  will  result  in  an
operation, planning and management improvement of different marine activities in the sectors of
wild fisheries and aquaculture, having an economic and societal positive effect on the involved
parties.

*This  project  has  received  funding  from  the  European  Union’s  Horizon  2020  research  and  innovation
programme under grant agreement No 870465