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Description
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The high level and the extension of environmental contamination of the coastline affected by the petrochemical hub of Priolo-Augusta-Melilli activities led the Italian institutions (9/12/1998, n. 426) to include the area of Priolo between SIN and to develop a specific “Programma nazionale di bonifica e ripristino ambientale” (DM of Environment 18/09/2001 n. 468), to allow open competition for implementation of remediation and environmental restoration of contaminated sites.
The proposal concerns a research and training project with high environmental value to develop in the SIN Priolo, and is based on the development of advanced technologies able to indicate eco-friendly and environmentally sustainable products, processes and services associated with the deployment of interventions of remediation, rehabilitation and recovery of marine coastal environments altered by human activities. The project could stimulate interest for new opportunities offered by new SMEs to cover distinct segments of a currently undersized market.
It will be create an hybrid propulsion vessel powered by alternative energy, that will be able to carry out works about maritime constructions, data acquisition for sea monitoring and to ensure support for replanting activity by seagrasses.
The remediation of contaminated sites and the restoration of degraded waters will assume a strategic role as conciliate the objectives of rehabilitation (environmental benefits) and those of development (positive socio-economic implications), improving the quality of seabed and coastal waters subject to intervention at levels consistent with the needs of public health and the environment. The project will have positive implications in training and employment by activating of a Master in monitoring, remediation and restoration of degraded coastal marine areas, doctoral fellowships and research grants for advanced university training of researchers and technicians. The formation of specific and highly qualified Professional figures will be a further opportunity of new jobs and maintaining the existing, as well as a multiplier of activity.
The research project consists of pilot interventions aimed at developing products, processes and services for monitoring, remediation, environmental restoration, reconstruction of the underwater landscape and recovery and the strengthening of goods and services produced by coastal marine ecosystems altered by human activities.
Within the project, technologies aimed at making environmentally friendly remediation interventions, provided in the DM 468/2001, will be developed and finalize. In this context that the practice of the advanced technologies in marine environmental monitoring and the biotechnology applied to assessment and conservation of environmental quality, by bio-remediation.
Scientific knowledge on advanced technologies and environmentally sustainable transplantation with seagrasses and reconstruction of the submerged landscape by artificial reef that emulate the shapes found in nature will be extensive also by using of patents.
The transplantation project provides the utilization of an innovative product, patent pending by the proponents, consisting of a system made of biodegradable plastics (bioplastics) for fixing quick and efficient means of P. oceanica cuttings on the seabed in order to ensure engraftment and growth, and to facilitate the dynamic development of a natural meadow.
The skill of artificial reefs to provide areas of shelter and aggregation of populations of plants and animals now represents the greatest challenge of environmental restoration, given that the effectiveness of artificial reefs in determining an increase in productivity depends heavily on the architecture of structures. Within the project shapes and spatial arrangements of artificial reefs, already under patent, will be used for the reconstruction of natural underwater landscape.
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