Investigating the potential and feasibility of an offshore wind farm in the Northern Adriatic Sea

Multi-objective spatial tools to inform maritime spatial planning in the Adriatic Sea

“…The Adriatic Sea is heavily exposed to anthropogenic pressures (EC, 2011; Goffredo and Dubinsky, 2013) generated by a complex suite of activities: maritime transport, port activities (Trieste, Venice, Koper, Rijeka, Ancona, Brindisi, Bari or Vlorë), commercial fishery, aquaculture, especially in the lagoons of the Northern Adriatic Sea and tourism (EC, 2011). In the future, an intensification of human activities could be expected, leading to increased environmental pressures and sea conflicts: development of new port infrastructures in Ploce (Croatia), Bar (Montenegro) and Vlorë (Albania; Vidas, 2008), container traffic increase by 350% by 2020 (Barbanti et al, 2015), development of new cruising routes (Venice-Ravenna-Bari-Sivola and Kotor), increase of aquaculture activities (Brigolin et al, 2017;EUSAIR, 2017), increased grid connectivity through cabling and pipelines (IGI Poseidon Project, 2016; PCI Project, 2017), potential renewable energy development (Liščić et al, 2014;Schweizer et al, 2016), new hydrocarbon concessions, establishment of LNG terminals and booming of coastal and cruise tourism (Caric and Mackelworth, 2014). The spatial characterization of results was performed by dividing the Adriatic Sea into three biogeographic subdivisions according to Bianchi 2004 (Figure 1): 1) The Northern Adriatic (NAd, area = 44,434 km 2 ; 17.6 %) delimited by the Conero Regional Park to southern tip of the Istrian peninsula, covering the national sea boundaries of HR, IT and SL; 2) the Central Adriatic (CAd, area = 13,2610 km 2 ; 52.6%) delimited by the Gulf of Manfredonia to the coastal city of Dubrovnik, covering the national sea boundaries of BH, HR and IT and 3) the Southern Adriatic (SAd, area = 75,146 km 2 ; 29.8%) delimited by the city of Otranto, covering the national sea boundaries of AL, HR, IT and MT .…”

Addressing cumulative effects, maritime conflicts and ecosystem services threats through MSP-oriented geospatial webtools

“…Although the presented webtools benefit from a multitude of geospatial datasets (in total 65) composed by human uses, environmental components and pressures further extension can be considered. In particular, integration of novel datasets can be used for scenario analysis of emerging sectors of the marine economy in the Adriatic Sea, such as potential offshore wind energy farms off the coastal settlement of Rimini (Emilia-Romagna Region; Schweizer et al, 2016) Koper, 2015) or increasing aquaculture development to meet fish food demand (Piante and Ody, 2015) should be incorporated and analysed for its environmental impacts and the creation of potential sea use conflicts. Moreover, our case study shows high variability in CEA/MUC scores between western and eastern coastal areas, this is related to higher number and intensities of human activities along the Italian coasts compared to Slovenian and Croatian ones, but also due to a high heterogeneity in human activities (especially Oil and Gas extraction, aquaculture and shipping) and the number of datasets available from different countries.…”

CFD investigations of OXYFLUX device, an innovative wave pump technology for artificial downwelling of surface water

“…The design have been performed taking into consideration the climate and physical conditions typical of the Northern Adriatic Sea; as this is a site suffering from severe summer anoxia. The typical Northern Adriatic summer vertical density profiles, Figure 3, are derived from Artegiani et al (1997), [23], while the wave climate is derived from the analysis of waves data collected by the wave buoy Nausicaa, [24,25].…”