Baltic SCOPE Results
The two-year project covered four sectors of maritime activities: fishery, shipping, environment and energy. New methods were developed to gather information and develop planning evidence. The project reached its aim and increased the collaboration between the countries involved.
The findings we made in Baltic SCOPE are available below.
Final reports
Project Recommendations on Maritime Spatial Planning Across Borders
Topic papers
Joint maps
Online tool
During the project shipping density maps and data spanning ten years, from year 2006 to 2015, were processed and made available. All maps were made available through the HELCOM AIS Explorer.
The maps were created from quality controlled AIS data, Automatic Identification System data. The data allowed to compare the shipping data by months and by ship types.
This was the first time ever that this huge amount of data had been processed for the Baltic Sea region. How huge was the data set, you ask? Well, the year 2013 alone contains 1.3 billion rows. If you were to print that, you would need 30 million A4 pages. If you put those pages one after the other, they would reach from the Baltic Sea to South Africa.
HOW-TO
If you want to know how to make maps like these, check out report Mapping Maritime Activities within the SCOPE Planning Area. It explains the key steps to create shipping density maps, from raw data, cleaning and sorting by month, to making the actual maps.
The report also includes some reflections on mapping fisheries and renewable energy, mainly wind power, in the Baltic Sea region.
An online platform that today provides open access to a wide range of geographic and environmental data related to the Baltic Sea region – HELCOM Map and data service (HELCOM MADS) – can be found here.