Decision support tools

Decision support tools are used to designate and limit the zones in the Mediterranean Sea that are of interest for conservation, and will serve managers, stakeholders and others in their decision making at the local, national as well as regional level. The application of this methodology leads to the development of tools to interpret the information gathered and apply the set methodology in a coherent and integrated format. These tools provide a number of options to help decision makers in their management decisions.

The major outcome of the MedRas is a decision support platform that enables useful management and defensible resource-allocation decisions to be made, especially in data poor environments in the Mediterranean Sea. Additional products include regional mapping and data accessibility of important ecological and biodiversity areas, for which there is special concern at a national, regional, or global scale with special attention to representative areas that have suffered significant decline in extent or quality. During this first phase of the project, decision support tools will be developed first at the pilots sites.