The information, which satellite sensors can provide, hugely supports the investigations of socio-economic issues surrounding the use of marine resources.

In an ever-changing world, with more and more people moving to the coast and exploiting marine resources, governments need to make decisions about what sectors a marine environment can support sustainably over time. This also means weighing out where we can benefit most from either conserving or using valuable resources.

The job for socio-economists is to understand how the marine environment is changing,what kind of sectors it can support (e.g. Aquaculture) and what that means to communities.

By combining satellite data with tools for mapping socioeconomic parameters we gain useful insight for planning solutions on how to use the environment in a more holistic way. This helps making decisions on whether an area is suitable for e.g. tourism, aquaculture or offshore oil platforms.

Featured Educators:

• Dr Eleni Papathanasopoulou

Explore the data

EUMETSAT Oceans MOOC Data Viewer

Don’t forget you can download the video and transcript with the links on the right.