Integrated Coastal management

Since the Academic year 2001-02, the Department of Marine Sciences has been running an one-year MSc Course Program on "Integrated Coastal Zone Management". To date, there have been more than 160 graduates.

The course runs in collaboration with scientists of the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) and the Fisheries Research Institute (FRI). The course objective is to provide graduates with the scientific expertise required to successfully deal with problems related to Integrated Coastal Management, focusing on the ecological and physical processes, ecosystem degradation/restoration, the sustainable management of biological resources, Climate Change impact and geo-hazard risk assessments and the sustainable development of the Coastal Zone.

Aims

The Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) postgraduate program aims to provide scientific training through both lectures and hands-on exercises. Its ultimate goals are:

• To contribute to the development of high-level professionals and researchers.
• To advance basic and applied research in the coastal/marine environment considering also sustainable development needs.
• To disseminate expert scientific knowledge to the private and public sectors involved in the ICZM.

Postgraduate students are trained in:

• the coastal and marine physical, chemical, biological, and geological processes;
• the sustainable management of living resources, with a particular focus on fisheries and aquaculture;
• pollutant quantification and the assessment of the quality of the coastal environment;
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the merging of satellite and ‘ground-truth’ data, spatial environmental data analysis and the use/development of ICZM tools;
• the study of ecological processes in coastal/marine ecosystems, with a focus on eutrophication, biodiversity, primary production, marine food web analysis, and population dynamics;
• coastal hydrodynamics and morphodynamics and the effects of marine geohazards;
• ICZM international and European policies and regulation and environmental impact assessment techniques.

In addition, postgraduate students are trained:

• to use modern environmental data processing methods and multi-criteria methodologies as decision-making tools;
• in the planning of the Integrated Management of Coastal Areas and River basins, through modeling and the application of novel methods and techniques;
• the application of innovative methodologies in operational oceanography, hydroacoustics and fisheries management;
• in the risk assessment of coastal infrastructure.