Underwater monitoring system for forecasting and management harbours silting up
The challenge shared by the ports involved in the project (Piombino, Savona, Toulon) is the possibility of carrying out a precise control of the bathymetry variations in their port basins, starting from understanding the causes of the water level raising and lowering.  Therefore, the general objective will be to create a system of forecasting and monitoring bathymetric variations, called GRAMAS, capable of separating the effects due to the Newtonian earth-moon relations from those due to the seabed raising with accumulated sediments. By using weather sensors and stations installed in partnering ports, the system will produce systematically updated 3D bathymetric maps and forecast data on Newtonian phenomena interfering with the changes from pumping ships in harbour basins.  Cross-border cooperation will be fundamental for the testing and validation of the GRAMAS monitoring system, which will be tested in 3 ports with different characteristics in terms of boundary morphology, currents, shape and basin orientation. The system will then be tested under different operating conditions. Its maintenance and improvement will be based on the cooperation of 3 Port Authorities signing a joint action plan to keep exchanging information periodically on its functioning and silting up governance actions. The monitoring system with the characteristics described above does not currently exist on the market, so the leader company will carry out a pre-commercial public procurement, which will identify the most innovative solutions for the realisation of the requested system. Therefore, the 3 ports will experiment a low-cost prototype system that can later be adopted by other ports in the cooperation area.