The Plastic Busters CAP project, “Fostering knowledge transfer to tackle marine litter in the Mediterranean by integrating Ecosystem based Management (EbM) into Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM)”, as its name indicates, is about capitalizing upon and effectively transferring the available knowledge and tools that address the entire management cycle of marine litter.
WHAT DOES THE PROJECT CONSIST IN?
The Plastic Buster CAP project deploys a comprehensive, multilevel and strategic approach to facilitate the efforts of decision makers and stakeholders in effectively dealing with marine litters, among which the COVID-19 pandemic significant increase in the use of single-use plastics which account for up to 50% of beach litter. It will consolidate and fully exploit the knowledge obtained by 5 impactful projects in order to develop tailored-made capitalization outputs, i.e. tools and mechanisms addressing the entire management cycle of marine litter from monitoring and assessment to prevention and mitigation, that will create the enabling conditions for a societal shift towards sustainable consumption and production patterns, and a truly circular economy and a green economy.
The project is also about dissemination, and includes comprehensive communication actions via online tools and social media, targeted capacity building programmes for marine litter monitoring and mitigation, public participation actions and awareness raising campaigns targeted to local communities, networking events for amphidromous and constructive exchanges between stakeholders, policy dialogue workshops, joint commitments to concretise the uptake of the project results, effective mainstreaming via the strategic positioning of the several project partners and the strong ties with relevant policy groups.
EXPECTED RESULTS/OBJECTIVES
The Plastic Buster CAP has the potential to be an effective “game changer” when it comes to the marine litter in the Mediterranean. In the short- and mid-term the following changes are expected:
In the long-term, Plastic Busters CAP will lead to:
PARTNERSHIP
Plastic Busters CAP is an ENI CBC MED project being implemented by a consortium of 8 Mediterranean partners led by the University of Siena.
The aim of this project is to develop a smart monitoring system that could prevent damages to the cable by early warning of potentially harmful activities. The system pursued in this proposal comprises two essential elements in order to achieve its goal: first, a Distributed Acoustic Sensor (DAS), i.e. a device that is capable of transforming a conventional single-mode optical fiber cable into an array of thousands of dynamic strainmeters, each one capable of recording tiny strain variations along a section of cable of a few meters; second, an artificial intelligence (AI) system capable of analyzing the data gathered by the DAS and transforming it into an intelligent interpretation of the potential threat to the cable in every possible situation. Such a system would be permanently scanning the natural and anthropogenic threats on the optical fiber infrastructure and would raise early warning alerts to trigger preventive actions. Moreover, the availability of continuous DAS measurements of strain distribution along the optical fiber cable could also allow the development of extensive fatigue analysis of the infrastructure, therefore allowing a continuous lifetime assessment of the cable and enabling predictive maintenance of the stressed sections. This maintenance scheme would be completely innovative in the field of submarine cables infrastructure.
But the benefits of the project may expand beyond preventive maintenance. The work developed in this project is ground-breaking and could lead to a massive leap in the field of submarine Seismology. DAS technology can truly transform the way in which underwater seismic measurements are done nowadays. In submarine environments, the scarcity of instruments deployed so far offshore has led to biased and low-resolution measurements of the Earth tomography in these regions. Being capable of deploying large arrays of seismic sensors offshore at minimal cost (just connecting an interrogator device in one end of the cable) could enable new understanding of the Earth interior in these regions and new early warning systems for events as damaging as tsunamis. Beyond underwater Seismology, the contribution of this project could also transform the field of Oceanography, where it could provide a new tool to gain understanding on phenomena such as tides, infra-gravity waves, ocean currents or meteotsunamis.