Interactive, Visual Track-and-Trace of Marine Debris on Dutch Coastlines

This is a group project by D. Hougee and R. Sachsenweger Ballantyne, under the supervision of C. Kehl, and in collaboration with J. Köllermeier. It is a collaboration project with the Computational & Numerical Mathematics group (at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) and also the Parcels team (at Utrecht University).

The Dutch coast is part of the high-traffic English Channel economic area, with an excessive amount of container ships throughput each day (see VesselFinder.com ). At the same time, the coastline (and specifically the Waddenzee) is a unique ecological, biodiverse marine area, serving as nesting place for a massive bird population. Both economic- and ecological interest are often at odds and get into conflict when container ships wreck at sea near the coast (see ‘Het Geheugen’). The cargo drop of plastics, containers and fuel endangers the local ecosystem, as happened with the MSC Zoe in 2019 and the Fremantle Highway in July 2023.

In order to raise awareness of the impact such accidents have, and to educate the general public and public authorities, this project aims to develop an interactive visualisation to track-and-trace polluting debris along the Dutch coastline.