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Project

DREAMS - Decommissioning - Relative Effects of Alternative Management Strategies

Oil rig in the distance. Photo by Clyde Thomas courtesy of Unsplash

Completed project

Project start: July 2020  |  Project end: July 2023
Funder: NERC
Principal Investigator: Dr Paul J. Somerfield
Other participants from PML: Dr Michael Bedington, Louise McNeill, Christine Pascoe, Dr Ana Queirós, Dr Gennadi Lessin, Dr Heather Baxter, Dr Paul Somerfield, Dr Stephen Watson, Professor Nicola Beaumont, Dr Molly James

The highly integrated DREAMS project is designed to bring together information about the effects of man-made structures on the marine ecosystem and the benefits that it provides for humans.

The project will inform decision-makers and stakeholders about the relative benefits and detriments, for the environment and people, of different strategies for decommissioning structures in the North Sea.

Through novel integration and analyses of existing data from a wide range of sources, the effects of man-made structures on ecosystems and the services they provide will be quantified and better understood. Results will be integrated into state-of-the-art ecosystem models to examine how different approaches to decommissioning lead to different outcomes, and what those outcomes mean for people.

The DREAMS project is led by Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML, UK) and includes the University of Plymouth (UoP, UK), Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas, UK) and the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies (HRI) at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi (TAMUCC, USA).

University of Plymouth DREAMS webpage.

 

Impact

Ultimately DREAMS will make the best use of existing information and the latest methods and models to provide information needed to make better, more strategic, decommissioning decisions for the future.