PREVIMER Context

PREVIMER was set up as the Operational Coastal Oceanographic Centre with the aim of providing observation data, modelling tools and real time forecasts as required by a fast growing number of users working on the coastal zones, taking the regulations in force into consideration.

The PREVIMER project is listed within the “Five-year plan drafted between the State and the region, i.e. Brittany, for 2000-2006”(“Contrat de Plan État Région Bretagne 2000-2006”).

As the majority of maritime activities are concentrated in coastal zones and along their shorelines, these environments are subject to an ever-greater anthropic pressure.

This pressure makes it essential to know the state of the environment, as much for the security of activities, the management of resources as for the handling of conflicts of interest that may arise, with the aim of achieving sustainable development.

This is what we call the “operational coastal oceanography”.

PREVIMER adheres to well-defined regulations:

Access to environmental information: Aarhus 98 Convention, 2003 European Directive, French law of October 2005,
Water directives, bathing water directives.

All the operational developments and their implementations are conducted in the framework of partnership agreements between public institutions (the French Naval Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service (SHOM), the French National Weather Service (Météo France), the French public science and technology research institute (IRD), the European Institute of Marine Studies (IUEM)) andprivate companies (R&D departments, small to medium companies manufacturing oceanographic instrumentation).

The fields developed by the scientific research, such as the validation of modelling results or data assimilation, are supported by research laboratories (IFREMER, IRD and UBO). Besides, IFREMER’s calculating facilities, at Brest Centre, are used for all modelling tasks and data processing.

Lastly, PREVIMER aims to encourage the development of services, mainly oriented towards fulfilling local authorities’ requirements, institutions in charge of environmental management, and diverse users of coastal zones.