The Potential of Current- and Wind-Driven Transport for Environmental Management of the Baltic Sea

Abstract The ever increasing impact of the marine industry and transport on vulnerable sea areas puts the marine environment under exceptional pressure and calls for inspired methods for mitigating the impact of the related risks. We describe a method for preventive reduc-tion of remote environmental risks caused by the shipping and maritime industry that are transported by surface cur-rents and wind impact to the coasts. This method is based on characterizing systematically the damaging potential of the offshore areas in terms of potential transport to vul-nerable regions of an oil spill or other pollution that has occurred in a particular area. The resulting maps of prob-abilities of pollution to be transported to the nearshore and the time it takes for the pollution to reach the nearshore are used to design environmentally optimized fairways for th