The increase of shipping traffic in the Balkan MED area has raised critical issues concerning the environmental quality of coasts and sea water, mainly due to the extremely voluminous and complex legislation regarding the environmental protection. The implementation of such legislation requires - among others - modern tools for the training and the education of stakeholders  involved at port activities, public officers and people working to ports daily life that affect through many different ways, the coastal environment. Requirement of continues learning via simple methodologies and integrated methodologies about environmental protection and sustainability issues is considered a major factor. But the ignorance and the lack of organization and accessibility to the relative legislation as well as sometimes the problematic implementation of the national/international legislation comprise to the gradual degradation of the environment in port areas and the surrounding coastal waters.

In recent years, the misuse of resources and means related to ports; their expanding structures and activities have led to uncontrolled pressure on the nearby coastal environment. ECOPORTIL project aims to train on the environmental legal framework and so to  improve the environmental quality of ports and their surrounding coastal areas by supporting their sustainability, through the implementation of modern methodologies and good practices, the creation of a strong educational/ training background according to EU and national legislation as well as through innovative tools and methods for the training and capacity building of relevant stakeholders as a prevention measure of pollution and preservation of natural maritime resources.   ECOPORTIL project will provide ICT tools; consolidated managing approaches and educational background for addressing these challenges and their prompt solution, with guaranteed positive effects on coastal environment protection and sustainability.

Innovative methods, tools and good practices developed & established, will further expanded to carry out analyses of EU and national standards. There will be used monitoring systems at ports and coastal areas to provide all the essential connections between data monitoring and regulation requirements. They will take into account the ports needs to create productive methodologies (common shared guidelines) for implementation of EU& national legislations during education and training processes. Model and the advanced tools will be included in (eco-mapping, WebGIS), and consequently their application could allow saving recovering of human/financial resources currently not available within the ports in Balkan-Med region on one side and on the other will test and provide the port authorities with an innovative, updated management scheme based on ICT and "digital environment" supporting port authorities in response to their need for eco-management and environmental training qualification.

Implementation period:    01.11.2017-31.10.2019
Project manager:        Jordan Marinski, Ds&PhD, Professor
E-mail:             jordan.marinski@***
Funding:          INTERREG Balkan-Mediterranean 2014-2020: www.interreg-balkanmed.eu
Website:            www.ecoportil.eu