PrimePrevention - Towards an early-warning system for marine biological hazards harnessing a trans-disciplinary approach

Due to the expansion of sustainable use of the oceans within the framework of the Blue Growth Strategy, and the expected increase in marine natural hazards such as harmful microorganisms or hypoxia in consequence to climate change, the socio-economic relevance of marine biological hazards and their prevention will increase in the future. Currently, there is  a lack of efficient, flexible, widely accessible, user-friendly observation technology. This makes it difficult to monitor the occurrence of marine biological hazards at appropriate spatial and temporal scales tailored to society's needs for early warning systems to prevent and minimize socio-economic impacts. The transdisciplinary project PrimePrevention aims to provide knowledge and technical solutions for monitoring and predicting the occurrence of marine biological hazards in order to derive recommendations for actions to protect society from their economic and health impacts, also considering cascading effects from additional marine extremes. This is based on an integration of social and natural sciences, engineering, citizen science and relevant stakeholder groups in a transdisciplinary co-creation process in two living labs along the German Baltic Sea. This will lead to a smart and flexible ocean observation strategy that is suited to serve the observation needs of individual stakeholder groups. Observation and prediction methods will be developed exemplarily for selected biological hazards (Cyanobacteria, Vibrio and hypoxia) in the western Baltic Sea, which will be the basis for recommendations on early warning systems.