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Marine Hazard

Marine Hazard is a project for the “development of innovative technologies for identification, monitoring and mitigation of phenomena of natural and anthropiccontamination of the marine environment”. It involves 7 public partners (6 public research bodies, 1 university consortium) and 5 private entities (1 big industry, 1 PMI, 1 micro enterprise, 2 scarl) with an overall budget of 12.230.750,94 € and the end date set for February 2023. Marine Hazard’s activities develop on four driving themes grouped into as many Research Objectives (RO):

  1. prevention of consequential effects to anthropic activities in a deep environment
  2. remediation of contaminated sediments
  3. continuous monitoring of the marine-coastal system
  4. restoration of Posidonia oceanica meadows.

The results obtained by the four ORs aim to provide the basic information that will allow policy makers to define regulations and guidelines to face risks and improve resilience, both of coastal populations and the superficial and deep marine environment. The section of INGV in Palermo takes part in the activities of RO 1 and RO 3.

In RO1 through campaigns at sea for geochemical characterization of the fluids and solid depositions emitted from hydrothermal systems of the Aeolian Arch, of the Seamount Palinuro and the banks of the Strait of Sicily. In particular, the installation of a multidisciplinary marine observatory is planned, collecting for the first time a long temporal series of data continuously, from deep hydrothermal systems of Seamount Palinuro and the Aeolian Islands.

In RO3 the section of INGV in Palermo is committed to collaborate with INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) to the construction of an acoustic station, with high sensitivity, capable of making new contributions to the marine noise descriptor. The station will be tested on the INFN node of the European infrastructure KM3Net, off the southeastern coast of Sicily at a depth of 3500 meters.

A significant part of Marine Hazard’s activities is dedicated to higher education with the Master “Marine School” in technologies and processes for marine-coastal environment, coordinated by MATER srl, Technological innovation laboratory and research to support innovation. The Master has, as its objectives, the creation of professional figures useful at birth of an integrated system of skills on the Sicilian territory, capable of facing risk mitigation in the marine environment. The Palermo section hosts some of the participants as interns for the final “training on the job”.