Georgios Georgoulis

The analysis of the 2002 Prestige tanker accident showed how public misinformation can worsen marine pollution incidents, rendering their management suboptimal as these evolve, thus raising the issue of appropriately informing and educating coastal and island populations who are at risk. Two decades later, developments in electronic platforms, including Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the Automatic Identification System (AIS) for ship signal transmission, and social media, provide a set of means for public monitoring of such incidents, creating the possibility to antagonise effectively erroneous or malevolent information, which can hinder efficient actions for containing marine pollution risks even without active training of the populations concerned. The authors, in the framework of the development of the Marine Coastal Observatory and Risk Management project “AEGIS+”, have developed E-S.A.V.E., an online innovative platform that (a) meets the needs of different users as revealed by a survey run across groups of them, (b) uses a suitable Geographic Information System (GIS) environment, (c) cooperates with public authorities, for the reliable update of automated systems, and (d) employs an artificial intelligence (AI)-supported tool for social media monitoring; the platform also provides educational resources and information on national and international resources on marine environmental protection and sustainable maritime logistics.

The analysis of the 2002 Prestige tanker accident showed how public misinformation can worsen marine pollution incidents, rendering their management suboptimal as these evolve, raising thus the issue of appropriately informing and educating coastal and island populations at risk. Two decades later, developments in electronic platforms, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), in Automatic Identification System (AIS) for ship signal transmission, and in social media, provide a set of means for public monitoring of such incidents, creating the possibility to antagonize effec-tively erroneous, or malevolent information which can hinder efficient actions for containing ma-rine pollution risks even without active training of populations concerned. The authors, in the framework of development of the Marine Coastal Observatory and Risk Management project “AEGIS+”, have developed E-S.A.V.E., an online platform which: a) meets the needs of different users as revealed by a survey run across groups of them, b) uses a suitable Geographic Infor-mation Systems (GIS) environment, c) cooperates with public authorities, for the reliable update of automated systems, and d) employs an artificial intelligence (AI) supported tool for social me-dia monitoring; the platform also provides educational and information national and interna-tional resources on marine environmental protection and sustainable maritime logistics.