Water Seminar Day & International Marine Workshop

Dr. Anastasia Sofroniou will host the first day, where local & international academics and policy makers will deliver a series of talks on water related issues concerning the island. On the second day Prof. Tarmo Soomere will organize an International Workshop towards the smart use of marine currents for environmental management.

March 18, 2010

List of speakers:

    • Prof. Phoebe Koundouri
      Athens University of Economics and Business: “Economics of Water Management in Developing Countries: Problems, Principles and Policies”
    • Prof. Nicolas Theodossiou
      Aristotle University of Thessaloniki: “Water resources management under climate change conditions”.
    • Mr. Sofoklis Aletraris
      Director of the Water Development Department (WDD) in Cyprus: “Water resources management in Cyprus. Models that might be needed by the WDD”.
    • Mr. Christos Zoumides
      Cyprus University of Technology: “Incorporating the water footprint into national water management policy”.
    • Prof. Christos Anastasiou
      Frederick University: “Mathematical modelling and engineering decision making applied to wastewater treatment and reuse”.
    • Dr. George Zodiatis
      Vice-Director of the Oceanography Centre, University of Cyprus. “The Oceanography Centre – Data and models in support of decision making” (On behalf  of Prof. George Gregoriou)
    • Dr. Arvo Käärd
      Head of the Environment Department, City of Tallinn
    • Dr. Ain Valdmann
      Head of the Municipal Engineering Department, City of Tallinn
    • Prof. Tarmo Soomere
      Institute of Cybernetics at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
      Implications of intense fast ferry traffic on nearshore water quality and beach erosion
  • Prof. Kristofer Döös
    Department of Meteorology, University of Stockholm, Sweden
    Relative dispersion of surface drifters and model simulated trajectories

March 19, 2010

Towards the Smart Use of Marine Currents for Environmental Management

The workshop is organised in the framework of the BONUS+ activities funded jointly by ten agencies responsible for marine research in the Baltic Sea countries together with the European Union. The key speakers come from the project “BalticWay: The potential of currents for environmental management of the Baltic Sea maritime industry” driven by a consortium of 8 research groups from 5 Baltic Sea countries. The project aims at a substantial decrease of marine-industry-induced environmental risks and impacts. The core objective is to develop a scientific platform for an innovative low-cost technology of environmental management of shipping, offshore, and coastal engineering activities.  The approach makes use of the existence of semi- persistent current patterns that considerably affect the probability of pollution propagation from different open sea areas to the vulnerable areas. For certain regions (areas of reduced risk) this probability is relatively small. A combination of the classical risk analysis with novel mathematical methods is applied to identify the persistence, properties, and potential effect of such areas, and to establish generic criteria for their existence.

Key presentations about different aspects of the development of such a technology will be given by:

    • Prof. Tarmo Soomere
      Institute of Cybernetics at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia)
      The potential of the use of marine currents for environmental management
    • Dr. Oleg Andrejev, Dr. Alexander Sokolov, Prof. Kai Myrberg
      Finnish Environmental Institute, Helsinki
      Using Gulf of Finland circulation simulation to identify areas of reduced risk for marine transport: a modification of the Soomere-Quak method
    • Prof. Kristofer Döös
      Department of Meteorology, University of Stockholm, Sweden
      Tracing the ocean and atmospheric circulation and its substances with TRACMASS trajectories
    • Nicole Delpeche
      Institute of Cybernetics at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
      Spatial patterns of transport by surface currents in the Gulf of Finland
    • Dr. Jens Murawsky
      Danish Meteorological Institute, Copenhagen
      Introduction into DMI’s operational oil spill model
    • Dr. Andreas Lehmann
      Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel, Germany
    • Prof. Emil Stanev
      Institute for Coastal Research, GKSS Geesthacht, Germany
      Coastal Observing System for Northern and Arctic Seas (COSYNA): a contribution to improving coastal ocean predictions
  • Bert Viikmäe
    Institute of Cybernetics at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
    Spatial distributions of probabilities of coastal hit in the Gulf of Finland