The MSP Challenge Simulation Platform was developed under the professorship of Igor Mayer (Serious Games, Innovation & Society). This platform combines geodata and game technology to support communication and learning of Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP). Since 2016 different sea basin editions have been developed using the platform by AGM Research’s CRADLE lab.

Maritime Spatial Planning

After the North Sea, Baltic Sea and Clyde marine region, it is now Italy’s Adriatic Sea for which CRADLE developed the newest edition of MSP Challenge. Thanks to a collaboration with the Italian institute CNR-Ismar (CNR Institute of Marine Science), CRADLE was able to implement dozens of geodata layers in this new edition. The next step is to explore Adriatic-specific shipping intensity and marine ecosystem models that can respond to specific spatial plans, such as offshore wind farms or marine protected areas. As a result, the MSP Challenge Adriatic Sea edition can become a next-generation marine planning support system for this sea region.
    

  
Building a Worldwide User Community

Since 2018 MSP Challenge has been applied in 60+ workshops, conferences and educational sessions, as well as real-life stakeholder sessions, all over the world both off- and online. And these numbers keep growing. During three recent Adriatic Sea workshops a group of 50 professionals discussed their preferred spatial designations to develop a complete plan for Italy’s territorial waters and other planning areas. Recent sessions with other MSP Challenge editions have been very diverse in terms of duration, participants, focus areas, spatial plans, and resulting impacts, demonstrating the platform’s flexibility.

Development and application will continue for several years, for instance under new EU Horizon 2020/Europe and otherwise-funded projects. Numerous open-access publications about the platform’s architecture, technical characteristics, history and usefulness are already available on Pure. The entire MSP Challenge Simulation Platform is free and open-source software, and its development and application have been co-funded by:

• The Dutch, Scottish and German national governments’ MSP authorities;
• The Dutch national DigiShape innovation platform;
• Different schemes of the European Union: 
  • European Regional Development Fund (through the NorthSEE Interreg North Sea Region and Baltic LINes Interreg Baltic Sea Region projects); 
  • European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (through the SIMCelt and MSP-MED projects); 
  • Erasmus+ (through the SP-MSP and Knowledge Flows strategic partnership projects).

So which sea is next?