A Reservoir Model for the Continental Shelf, it’s been done in Belgium

Spatial planning is a discipline mostly associated with onshore built-up areas, but if there is one region in the North Sea that requires a rigorous mapping of activities it is the Belgian offshore area. Nature conservation, shipping, fishing, sand extraction, energy production, cables and pipelines, military exercises, … are all competing for space in this little patch of sea.

Different stakeholders active on the Belgian Continental Shelf. The maps are based on information from MarineAtlas.be (2014-2020) and the location of the sand banks has been sourced from the TILES Report. Please note that one stakeholder has not been mapped here; the fishing industry, because of its presence throughout the entire Belgian offshore. (animation by Henk Kombrink, Editor Expronews)

The Norwegian Expronews linked the Belgian marine spatial planning nicely with some of the RBINS work in relation to the assessment of reserves of certain abiotic resources and their potential for exploitation in a summarizing article.

Special attention is attributed to

  • the state-of-the-art 3D resource model that describes the distribution and availability of all non-hydrocarbon geological resources in the Belgian and adjacent Dutch marine waters, and can also serve as a resource decision support system and to underpin long-term adaptive management strategies (TILES, Van Lacker et al. 2019, Hademenos et al. 2019)
Output example of the TILES model.
Geological map of the Brabant Massif onshore, extrapolated to offshore.