Closing Remarks After Four Years of Transforming Lagoon Management
After starting in 2020 under the Horizon 2020 program, SMARTLAGOON has now reached its conclusion. Over four years of intense and dedicated work, the project has pushed the boundaries of innovation to address the challenges facing the Mar Menor lagoon. The greatest achievement of SMARTLAGOON has been the development of a digital twin of the Mar Menor, a groundbreaking virtual model that integrates geospatial, climatic, and social data. This digital twin allows stakeholders to simulate and predict environmental scenarios, providing invaluable insights for decision-making and sustainable management. This achievement reflects the project’s core mission: combining technology, science, and community engagement to predict socio-environmental evolution and...
SMARTLAGOON 2024 Annual Meeting
During the last week of June, the SMARTLAGOON team gathered together at the UCAM HiTech Innovation hub for the 2024 annual meeting. This was the occasion to discuss the project's progress, address pending issues, and plan future activities as the project comes closer to its conclusion. Here is a recap of the meeting's key sessions and discussions. Monday, June 24 SMARTLAGOON Project Status After an official welcome session, an overview of the project's status was presented, highlighting significant milestones achieved and outlining the objectives for the last months of the project. Mar Menor - Erken Lake Monitoring The monitoring activities for Mar Menor and Erken Lake were reviewed, focusing...
SMARTLAGOON modeling workshop in Oslo
In March 2024, the modeling work packages convened for a two-day session in Oslo hosted by NIVA to explore the integration of socio-economic and environmental models—this effort aimed to enhance understanding of the connections between human activities and natural systems. The meeting brought together the socio-economic system dynamics (SD) model with the catchment model (SWAT) and the lagoon model (GOTM) to brainstorm strategies for integration. While socio-economic models delve into human behaviors, decision-making processes, and economic activities, environmental models simulate climate dynamics, land use changes, and ecosystem functions. Despite the challenge of creating a computational coupling, we devised alternative ways by providing boundary conditions...
Unveiling the Complexity: Recap of SMARTLAGOON’s second participatory system dynamics modeling workshops.
In May's second week, SMARTLAGOON successfully conducted the second series of participatory systems dynamics modeling workshops. The week proved to be highly productive and engaging, yielding important insights. The results are being analyzed and will serve as a foundation for upcoming participatory activities scheduled for autumn 2023. SMARTLAGOON is an interdisciplinary project addressing environmental, economic, and social challenges in Spain's Mar Menor Lagoon and Campo de Cartagena watershed. WP4 focuses on participatory system dynamics modeling to build a systematic understanding of the region's socio-ecological and socio-economic dimensions. The project involves workshops to explore stakeholders’ perspectives from various sectors, including environmental, agriculture, fishing, tourism, regional government,...
SMARTLAGOON science exchange seminar
---> Artículo en español disponible aquí! On Monday May 08, from 09:00 – 15:30 o'clock, the SMARTLAGOON project team invites you to a scientific exchange seminar, which is open for researchers, but also anyone else who is interested in research done related to the Mar Menor. During the morning, results from the SMARTLAGOON project will be presented, while, in the afternoon, researchers from other organisations will be invited to present their research. The seminar closes with a discussion about the possibility to cooperate. Location: UCAM HiTech, Sport & Health Innovation Hub, Google maps: https://goo.gl/maps/uixuWqabDXyZhBtv6 Please find below the final program. 9.00-10.00 Registration 10.00-10.30 Official welcome and Introduction about the SMARTLAGOON project - Estrella...
Unravelling the complexity of the Mar Menor system through participatory system dynamics modelling
During the last week of February and beginning of March SMARTLAGOON carried out the first set of workshops of the participatory systems dynamics modelling in the project. It was an intensive and fruitful week, and the results are being processed and will lay the ground for the follow-up participatory activities in May. SMARTLAGOON is an interdisciplinary project that aims to develop sustainable solutions for the environmental, economic, and social challenges facing the Mar Menor lagoon and the Campo de Cartagena watershed in Spain. The project comprises several work packages (WP), with WP4 focusing on participatory systems dynamics modelling of the socio-ecological and socio-economic dimensions of...