SNIMar Project: Preparation of integrated geographic information for marine and coastal water management

The SNIMar project aims to create a marine spatial data infrastructure that addresses the issues "what data on the marine environment exist?", "where are those data?" and "how to access it?" in order to support marine and coastal management as well as other processes such as MSP. The project gathered information on the marine environment that is currently scattered over several public entities. 

The ultimate project outcome is:

• To develop a Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDI) to increase the capacity for assessing the environmental status in marine and inland waters: The SNIMar geoportal. This geoportal will be a key tool for the environmental management of the Portuguese marine waters, contributing to the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and the Maritime Spatial Planning Directive (MSP), since it will simplify the sharing, searching and accessing to metadata and marine data, particularly useful for public administration, universities and research institutes.

Expected impact of the project:

• To strengthen the national Portuguese spatial information infrastructure (National Geographic Information System);
• To significantly reduce the waiting time and costs of obtaining thematic high quality information;
• To increase the number of online services provided by the public administration in the field of marine environment spatial databases;
• To increase the number of outputs and online services in relation to currently available spatial databases;
• To ensure the transition from the current databases into SNIMar, while preserving existing data and integrating new data;
• To ensure that the system will work in the near future, preferably, with a free license and through a cloud solution.

Project partners

·      Portuguese Task Force for the Extension of the Continental Shelf / Estrutura de Missão para a Extensão da Plataforma Continental (EMEPC)– Promotor (PT)

·      Norwegian Mapping Authority– Donor Partner (NO)

·      National Land Survey of Iceland– Donor Partner(IS)

·      Portuguese Sea and Atmosphere Institute(IPMA)– National Partner (PT)

·      Directorate General of Sea Policy / Direção Genal de Politica do Mar(DGPM) - Program Operator (PT)

·       Portuguese Environmental Agency / Agencia Portuguesa do Ambiente(APA) – Participating Entity (PT)

·       Directorate General of Natural Resources, Maritine Safety and Services/ Direção-Geral de Recursos Naturais, Segurança e Serviços Maritimos(DGRM) - Participating Entity (PT)

·      Directorate General for Territorial Development / Direção-Geral do Territorio(DGTerritorio) - Participating Entity (PT)

·       Dom Luiz Institute/ Instituto Dom Luiz (IDL)- Participating Entity (PT)

·      Science Faculty of the University of Lisbon / Faculdade de Ciencies do Universidade de Lisboa- Participating Entity (PT)

·      Maritime Accident Investigation Office and Aeronautical Meteorology Authority(GAMA) Participating Entity (PT)

·      Regional Government of Madeira / Região Autónoma da Madeira- Governo Regional- Participating Entity (PT)

·      Regional Government of Azores / Governo dos Açores- Participating Entity (PT)

·      Forestry and Nature Conservation Institute/ Instituto da Conservação da Naturaleza e das Florestas(ICNF)- Participating Entity (PT)

·       Hydrographic Institute / Instituto Hidrográfico da Marinha Portuguesa- Participating Entity (PT)