The TREASURE project has the overall objective of improving environmental quality in and around Mediterranean port areas by mitigating and reducing sediment and water pollution.
To this end, it tests integrated and multi-stakeholder support environments on a transnational scale, merging three multidisciplinary elements: a stakeholder ecosystem to create open pilot laboratories, an integrated approach to environmental quality assessment and the testing of novel techniques to restore degraded and polluted port areas.
Human activities cause unprecedented environmental changes in coastal and marine ecosystems. Port areas become both the final accumulation site for chemicals from anthropogenic activities and a source of pollution that is difficult to contain. This represents a major environmental risk to marine biodiversity and surrounding areas, as well as a risk to human health.
In this sense, the initiative identifies 3 sub-challenges:
- Governance: the need for cross-sectoral and cross-cutting governance frameworks to improve environmental quality in port areas.
- Environmental quality monitoring: the need for a common and advanced monitoring framework capable of assessing the impact and pressures on port environments.
- Novel techniques: the need to support the commercialisation and implementation of new techniques for remediation of contaminated sediments and water.
The project will carry out pilot projects to help improve environmental quality in ports in 6 areas: Tuscany (Italy), Valleta (Malta), Valencia (Spain), Piraeus (Greece¨), Bar (Montenegro) and Durres (Albania).
Fundación Valenciaport, in collaboration with the Port Authority of Valencia, will carry out two pilot activities:
- Test the development of a mini-laboratory of open innovation, within the framework of the OPENTOP initiative, to test new technologies to improve the quality of port water.
- Measuring the impact of cooling wastewater from open cycle scrubbers on port water.
