The marine environment is continuously and increasingly threatened by pollution derived from maritime accidents that frequently causes spills of dangerous substances. A great amount of work has been devoted to endow the EU-Member States with common protocols, action plans and operational tools regarding either oil or HNS spill. So far, however, it is not available as a unified platform that covers the Oil and HNS spills. This is the main gap that BE-READY project aims to fill by implementing an Environmental Decision Support System (EDSS), easily exportable to different geographical contexts, which models the most common sources of pollution.

The primary expected results of the BE-READY project is the implementation of a reliable and complete Environmental DSS tool which effectively helps the final end users in the response to marine pollution events. Indeed, coupling real time forecasts of meteocean conditions to numerical models will increase the quality of the spills trajectories/fate prediction and, finally, the effectiveness of the disaster response. The oil and HNS fate models will take into account the main weathering processes that these substances encounter during their transport. Moreover, the approach adopted in the project is perfectly updated to the current trends and it will generate undeniable long-term impacts in disaster management. The outputs of the actions specifically include; meteocean, oil and HNS spill modelling suite tailored for the pilot areas, stakeholder engagement workshops and final conference Training for professional operators and communication plan, social media, media coverage

BE-READY project is, on the one hand, also aimed at improving the existing operational model dedicated to the prediction of marine spill dynamics. In fact, the available DSS operational models, e.g. MEDESS-4MS for the Mediterranean Sea, OSERIT or Seatrack Web for the Baltic Sea among others, covers only oil-spill and floating materials. We intend to extend the operational model in order to cover a wider range of HNS substances. Particular attention will be devoted to the exportability of the model in different geographical regions. 

An effective response to marine pollution, however, it is not only matter of the availability of ICT tools, but relies also on the capacity of the operators and on the awareness of the key stakeholders. To this end, BE-READY project offers a specific training to local operators, who will have the opportunity to test their capacity during a small scale exercise.

The expected outcomes are:

• An IT-based solution to facilitate disaster response, etc. (e.g. data collection, telemedicine, rapid assessments, etc.) is available.

• An ICT tools is probably the main goal of the entire project. Indeed, coupling meteocean conditions to oil and HNS spills in a framework of a web-based DSS is developed in two successive work package. The innovative approach in designing this tool together with the progress experience of the partners in numerical modelling, development of web-gis and decision support systems assures the achievement of the outcome.

Main Project Outputs :

• Meteocean, oil and HNS spill modelling suite tailored for the pilot areas
• Stakeholder engagement
• Workshops and final conference
• Training for professional operators
• communication plan, social media, media coverage