Marine Information and Data Centre

Joint monitoring programme

Towards a Joint monitoring programme for the North Sea and the Celtic Sea (JMP NS/CS) is coordinated by Rijkswaterstaat, in collaboration with 17 partner institutions in all countries bordering the North Sea and the Celtic Sea. The project delivered a searchable metadatabase, building on the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD (Marine Strategy Framework Directive)) reporting formats, which may be further used in the OSPAR (Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic) data and information management system.

EU logoketting

Operational steps towards multiple use of monitoring platforms were identified, for instance how to use fish surveys for monitoring of other MSFD (Marine Strategy Framework Directive) parameters. Monitoring and assessment at ecologically relevant spatial scales, especially in offshore areas, requires strengthened international collaboration, comparable to current fisheries monitoring. Joint assessment areas together with optimization of spatial sampling design, increase the statistical power of collected data with the same or less monitoring effort. Tools and approaches were tested with three OSPAR (Oslo and Paris Conventions) common indicators, resulting in concrete proposals for joint monitoring. The project furthermore developed a general guidance on how to move towards joint monitoring.

JMP NS/CS metadatabase

The database is accessible at http://www.bmdc.be/NODC/jmp.xhtml (username: jmpguest – password: jmpguest). It currently contains information on MSFD (Marine Strategy Framework Directive) related national monitoring programmes from BE, DE, DK, NL, SE and UK. See for more information the report Act AB_inventory_database.

This project is co-financed by the European Union/DG Environment.

Grant Agreement No. 07.0335/2013/659567/SUB/C2

The JMP NS/CS project is one of three monitoring projects financed under the same call ‘Pilot projects – New Knowledge for an integrated management of human activities in the sea’. More information on the other projects can be found on:

The outcome of the joint final conference of the three projects is on: