Brief and project description
SIMSEA (Agent Based Modelling and Simulation for Conservation and Resource Management in Azorean Seamount) is a national initiative that aims to improve marine conservation and resource management strategies in the unique deep-sea ecosystems of the Azores. Led by MARE (Centro de Ciências do Mar e do Ambiente), the project brings together regional and national scientific expertise and is funded by the Azores 2020 operational programme (FEDER). Its goal is to develop predictive simulation frameworks that map interactions between marine life and human activities, creating a virtuous circle between environmental researchers, local authorities, and maritime stakeholders.
The motivation behind SIMSEA is straightforward: as marine resources face increasing pressure from human exploration and climate change, so does the risk of unintended ecological collapse caused by poorly evaluated management plans. Making marine governance "responsible" means ensuring that conservation strategies are based on accurate, fair, and transparent ecological models, fostering public trust and sustainability.
Within this broader effort, MARE's contribution focuses on agent-based modelling and controlled data simulation as a basis for building robust decision-making tools — standardized platforms that document and evaluate resource exploitation against strict conservation principles. By combining complex ecological meta-learning with regional environmental variables, the work aims to make impact evaluation more rigorous, reproducible, and resistant to the statistical blind spots that conventional static monitoring often misses.
The expected outcome is a set of methods and predictive simulation tools that help authorities and regional bodies assess whether maritime exploitation strategies behave sustainably before implementation — turning abstract environmental goals into concrete, measurable, and actionable management criteria.
Period: 2016 – 2019