New digital maps to help protect biodiversity in Danish waters
BIO-Route is a route-planning tool for navigating Danish waters that takes marine biodiversity into account. A series of maps showing environmental sensitivities in Danish waters are now being made freely available.
Danish Shipping is now launching BIO-Route, a tool designed to make it easier to take marine biodiversity into account when navigating Danish waters.
“Shipping affects marine life in the waters we sail through. As an industry, we have a responsibility to help reduce our negative impact on biodiversity. With BIO-Route, we are now launching a free, practical route-planning tool that will make it easier for ships to navigate Danish waters while taking account of the environment and marine life. I hope many will make use of the tool,” says Nina Porst, Director of Sustainable Shipping and Skills at Danish Shipping.
The starting point for BIO-Route is that relatively small adjustments to day-to-day operations and planning can, in some cases, help reduce shipping’s impact on the marine environment – without the need for new regulation or major investments.
I hope many will make use of the tool
The project has been developed in collaboration with DHI. As part of the project, DHI has carried out biological risk assessments of a range of impacts from shipping, including discharges, light and underwater radiated noise. Based on these assessments, maps have been developed showing where Danish marine areas are particularly sensitive to different types of impact.
The result is four environmental sensitivity maps covering Danish waters from Bornholm to Skagen, including the Øresund and the Great Belt:
• Presence – sensitivity related to the physical presence and movement of vessels, including vessel density, disturbance, turbidity and invasive species.
• Noise – sensitivity to underwater noise from vessels.
• Light – sensitivity to artificial light from vessels and operations.
• Discharges – areas where bilge pumping should, as far as possible, be avoided.
Using the maps, a range of measures can be taken to reduce the impact on the environment and biodiversity along a specific route. These may include avoiding particularly sensitive areas where operationally feasible, reducing speed or adjusting the route in areas with high sensitivity to noise, and considering changing or avoiding night-time operations in areas that are sensitive to light.
“By turning data on the marine environment into practical knowledge, we make biodiversity below the surface of the sea visible and can thereby help shipping take greater account of the marine environment, which is under considerable pressure. BIO-Route is based on publicly available data and is therefore free and openly accessible. At DHI, we see significant potential to further develop the maps with new data layers and targeted features, enabling them to deliver even greater value in the future,” says Emma Fournais Næsheim, Marine Environmental Engineer at DHI.
The project has been carried out with support from the Danish Maritime Fund.
The maps will be made available on the DHI website.
About BIO-Route
DHI has combined publicly available datasets from sources including ICES, HELCOM, ESAS and Natura 2000. The data have been standardised in a 5 × 5 km grid and converted into comparable sensitivity scores. Red-listed species are weighted twice as highly as other species.
For Presence, Noise and Light, areas are classified as having low, medium or high sensitivity. The Discharges map is different: in practice, it functions as an advisory layer identifying areas where discharges should be avoided.
It is important to emphasise that the maps are not intended to introduce restrictions on navigation. They are designed to help navigators identify areas where mitigation measures may be relevant.
The maps are already available in several formats, including JPG, GIS/shapefiles and KML/KMZ, allowing companies to use them alongside existing route-planning systems. They are intended as supplementary environmental information and not as part of official nautical charts.
They can also be used by companies as part of their internal sustainability work and voluntary documentation, for example to demonstrate that environmental sensitivities have been taken into account when planning a route.
The report considers the current maps a first step rather than the finished product.
The next phase could involve moving from static GIS maps to dynamic environmental information integrated into bridge and navigation systems, potentially through the new S-100 format. The ambition is that a navigator could, for example:
• view environmental sensitivity directly alongside the planned route;
• automatically check whether a route crosses particularly sensitive areas;
• view seasonal and time-dependent sensitivities;
• receive advisory information without the use of alarms;
• compare alternative routes, including on the basis of environmental sensitivity.
In the longer term, DHI sees potential to combine the maps with real-time environmental data, vessel traffic, forecasts and ecological models. This could develop the tool from a static biodiversity map into a broader, dynamic environmental decision-support system for shipping.
