MANIFESTS

MANIFESTS (MANaging risks and Impacts From Evaporating and gaseous Substances To population Safety) is a 2-year EU project co-funded by the EC/DG-ECHO focusing on volatile Hazard Noxious Substances (HNS) that can lead to the formation of toxic, flammable or even explosive gas clouds. The project seeks to improve response capacities of marine pollution responders through the development of innovative decision-support tools and operational guidelines and by facilitating access to relevant knowledge and databases on volatile HNS spills at sea.

The MANIFESTS project has now concluded and the outputs can be found on the website.

Project outcomes include:

  • A video about risks due to spills of volatile substance
  • An update of the HNS-MS database about properties of chemicals in marine waters
  • A knowledge tool: inventory of HNS preparedness and response resources generated in the frame of research projects
  • An operational field guide: “Protecting Communities from Maritime Incidents Involving Airborne Pollutants”
  • An exercise tool, making it possible to create a programme and formulate an exercise
  • A Common Operating Picture tool
  • A serious game that teaches the fundamentals needed to understand the fate of a chemical at sea in the event of an accidental spill
  • Reports on tasks carried out during the project.

An application for a followup projecct, MANIFESTS-Genius has been submitted to DG-ECHO.

Responding to maritime accidents can be extremely challenging when involving HNS that behave as evaporators. Due to their potential to form toxic or combustible clouds, evidence-based decisions are needed to protect the crew, responders, the coastal population and the environment. However, when an emergency is declared, key information is not always available for all the needs of responders. A case in point is the lack of knowledge and data to assess the risks that responders or rescue teams could take when intervening, or those that could impact coastal communities when allowing a shipping casualty to dock at a place of refuge.

The MANIFESTS project aims to address these uncertainties and improve response and training capacities through the development of an operational decision-support system (DSS) for volatile HNS spills. Besides management and communication, the project includes four other work packages: WP2 on collecting new data on evaporators, WP3 on table top exercises and field training, WP4 on improving modelling tools and WP5 on the development of the DSS. Key expected outcomes include:

  • Operational guidance;
  • Desktop and field exercises;
  • In situ training;
  • Experimental data on gas cloud fate;
  • A brand-new fire and explosion modelling module;
  • Improved HNS database with new experimental data on evaporation/dissolution kinetics.

The project receives a co-funding from the European Union Civil Protection Mechanism of DG-ECHO as 85% of the eligible costs (call UCPM-2020-PP-AG – Prevention and preparedness for marine pollution at sea and on shore). It is coordinated by Cedre and involves 8 other partners from Belgium, France, Norway, Spain, Portugal and United Kingdom.