Decommissioning – Relative Effects of Alternative Management Strategies (DREAMS)

Building on a number of recent UK-funded initiatives, DREAMS is a highly integrated project designed to develop new understanding of how man-made structures, and different decommissioning strategies for them, influence the structure, functioning and dynamics of marine ecosystems and affect delivery of ecosystem services from a whole ecosystem perspective.

The overall aim is to inform decision-makers and stakeholders about the relative benefits and detriments of different strategies for decommissioning structures in the North Sea for the environment and people. Through novel integration and analyses of existing data from a wide range of sources, using structured, systematic and meta-analytic approaches, the effects of man-made structures on ecosystems and services will be quantified, taking into account a wealth of ancillary information such as structures’ types, ages, activities and locations. Outcomes will be fed into state of the art ecosystem models to forecast ecosystem states and estimates of goods and services, with associated trade-offs across spatial and temporal scales, derived from different decommissioning strategies.