Marine spatial planning system
Sustainable planning in action
Introduction
For the past two years, The Crown Estate has embarked on an in-house project to provide our business with a marine spatial planning system and knowledge to facilitate the better understanding and sustainable planning of our marine estate.
Marine spatial planning
The text below is taken from the roadmap of maritime spatial planning, published by the European Commission in November 2008. This roadmap has been a first formal step on marine spatial planning taken by the European Commission which is part of the larger policy objectives incorporated in the integrate maritime policy for the European Union.
“Maritime spatial planning is a tool for improved decision making. It provides a framework for arbitrating between competing human activities and managing their impact on the marine environment. Its objective is to balance sectoral interests and achieve sustainable use of marine resources in line with the EU Sustainable Development Strategy.”
Our role
As owner of the seabed to the 12 nautical mile mark, and having rights out to the continental shelf, we are custodian of a marine environment over 850,000 sq km in size – three times the size of the UK land area – and are responsible for leasing many commercial activities in the UK waters. These include:
- wind energy
- wave energy
- tidal energy
- extraction of marine aggregates
- aquaculture (commercial farming of fish and shellfish)
- leasing space for cables and pipelines
- undersea storage of carbon and domestic gas.
With an increasing focus on marine renewables such as the Round 3 offshore wind farm programme, due to deliver 25 GW of renewable energy, and the Round 1 Pentland Firth wave and tide programme, due to deliver 1.2 GW of renewable energy, more emphasis is being placed upon the marine environment.
We have a responsibility to understand the best way to rationalise and manage the interactions between increasingly complex development activities on our marine estate to ensure its long term sustainable development.
Robust marine spatial planning is at the core of our business.
MaRS
MaRS is a decision support system used by the marine spatial planning team to identify areas of potential development opportunity in UK waters and resolve planning conflicts in a transparent, evidence-based manner.
With a comprehensive database using over 450 GIS layers, MaRS uses multi-criteria analysis to investigate areas with the most development potential and least risk.
MaRS is a GIS system capable of characterising the distribution and quality of resources of the marine environment and planning their development and use through the mapping and categorisation of:
- areas of physical suitability by activity (aggregates, wind power etc.)
- physical constraints and restriction to use
- consenting constraints including other marine users and environmental interests
- economic return and probability of economic return
- degree of social and economic sustainability
- spatial and temporal interaction between other activities and features (fish, mammals, etc.).
The outputs, maps and rationale make available the data and decision-making logic for stakeholders and opinion formers, enhancing certainty in planning decisions.
The system puts core GIS processing and interrogation in the hands of ‘non GIS specialists’ as well as delivering information for consultation purposes.
MaRS was used to identify the nine Round 3 offshore wind farm leasing zones which are now subject to multi-billion pound development activities and has been used extensively to plan internal marine activities, and also by government bodies such as Marine Scotland and the Norwegian Government.
The Crown Estate uses MaRS as an integral component to marine spatial planning.
For further details please contact:
Jamie Moore
The Crown Estate
16 New Burlington Place
London
W1S 2HX.
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