The grid is based on proposal at the 1st European Workshop on Reference Grids in 2003 and later INSPIRE geographical grid systems. The sample grid available here is part of a set of three polygon grids in 1, 10 and 100 kilometres. The grids cover at least country borders and, where applicable, marine Exclusive Economic Zones v7.0, http://www.marineregions.org. Note that the extent of the grid into the marine area does not reflect the extent of the territorial waters.

The grid is based on proposal at the 1st European Workshop on Reference Grids in 2003 and later INSPIRE geographical grid systems. The sample grid available here is part of a set of three polygon grids in 1, 10 and 100 kilometres. The grids cover at least country borders and, where applicable, marine Exclusive Economic Zones v7.0, http://www.marineregions.org. Note that the extent of the grid into the marine area does not reflect the extent of the territorial waters.

The EEA coastline for analysis is created for highly detailed analysis, e.g. 1:100 000, for geographical Europe. The coastline is a hybrid product obtained from projects using satellite imagery as data source: EUHYDRO (https://land.copernicus.eu/imagery-in-situ/eu-hydro) and GSHHG (http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/pwessel/gshhg/). The defining criteria was altitude level = 0 from EUDEM (https://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/satellite-derived-products/eu-dem/view). Outside the coverage of the EUDEM, the coastline from GSHHG was used without modifications. A few manual amendments to the dataset were necessary to meet requirements from EU Nature Directives, Water Framework Directive and Marine Strategy Framework Directive. In 2015, several corrections were made in the Kalogeroi Islands (coordinates 38.169, 25.287) and two other Greek little islets (coordinates 36.766264, 23.604318), as well as in the peninsula of Porkkala (around coordinates 59.99, 24.42). In this revision (v3, 2017), 2 big lagoons have been removed from Baltic region, because, according to HELCOM, are freshwater lagoons.

The EEA coastline dataset is created for detailed analysis with a Minimum Mapping Unit of e.g. 1:100000, for geographical Europe. The coastline is a hybrid product obtained from satellite imagery from two projects: 1) EUHYDRO (Pan-European hydrographic and drainage database) [https://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/satellite-derived-products/eu-hydro/view] and 2) GSHHG (A Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Geography Database) [http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/pwessel/gshhg/]. The defining criteria was altitude level = 0 from EUDEM [https://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/satellite-derived-products/eu-dem/view]. Outside the coverage of the EUDEM, the coastline from GSHHG was used without modifications. A few manual amendments to the dataset were necessary to meet requirements from EU Nature Directives, Water Framework Directive and Marine Strategy Framework Directive. In 2015, several corrections were made in the Kalogeroi Islands (coordinates 38.169, 25.287) and two other Greek little islets (coordinates 36.766264, 23.604318), as well as in the peninsula of Porkkala (around coordinates 59.99, 24.42). In this revision (v3, 2017), 2 big lagoons have been removed from Baltic region, because, according to HELCOM, are freshwater lagoons. This dataset is a polygon usable as a water-land mask.

This data set corresponds to the global offshore wind farm boundaries with the following attributes for each project: + WindfarmId (ID of the windfarm) + Name (Name of the windfarm) + Country (Country code) + Status (Status code) + WindfarmStatus (Windfarm Status or Project Status) + StatusComments (Comments on the Windfarm Status or Project Status) + CapacityMWMin (Capacity of the windfarm - Min) + CapacityMWMax (Capacity of the windfarm - Max) + NoTurbinesMin (Number of turbines - Min) + NoTurbinesMax (Number of turbines - Max) + Comments (Comments) + TurbineMWMin (Capacity of the turbine (set-up in the windfarm) - Min) + TurbineMWMax (Capacity of the turbine (set-up in the windfarm) - Max) + OtherNames (Other name of the windfarm) + CountryName (Country where the windfarm is set) + Lat (Geographic coordinate - centre latitude) + Lon (Geographic coordinate - centre longitude) + IsEstimatedLocation (This is where we know that a project exists but we don't know its exact location.) + IsOnHold + Developers (Developer(s) of the windfarm) + Owners (Owner of the windfarm) + Operators (Operator of the windfarm) + OffshoreConstructionStarts The frequency of the database release is monthly. This data set corresponds to the release of January 2020. This data set is strictly for internal EEA use as is subjected to a commercial license. Given the limited user subscriptions available, interested users should contact the SDI Team (sdi@eea.europa.eu) to be granted access to the data set.

The Marine Reporting Units (MRUs) are used within the reporting obligations of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) in order to link the implementation of the different articles to specific marine areas. The MRUs can be of varying sizes, according to the appropriate scale for the different reports (e.g. region, sub-region, regional or sub-regional subdivision, Member State marine waters, WFD coastal waters, etc.), as indicated in the Good Environmental Status 2017 Decision. The present data set is the first public version released of the MRUs used during the first cycle of implementation of the MSFD (2012-2018) in all the reporting exercises (2012 reporting of Articles 8, 9 and 10; 2014 reporting of Article 11; and 2016 reporting of Articles 13 & 14). The data set is distributed in SHP and in INSPIRE-compliant GML format.

This vector data set is the first public version released of the EU marine waters used for the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), submitted by the Member States to the European Commission. The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) applies to all marine waters of EU Member States, which in Article 3 are defined as follows: (a) waters, the seabed and subsoil on the seaward side of the baseline from which the extent of territorial waters is measured extending to the outmost reach of the area where a Member State has and/or exercises jurisdictional rights, in accordance with the UNCLOS, with the exception of waters adjacent to the countries and territories mentioned in Annex II to the Treaty and the French Overseas Departments and Collectivities; and (b) coastal waters as defined by Directive 2000/60/EC, their seabed and their subsoil, in so far as particular aspects of the environmental status of the marine environment are not already addressed through that Directive or other Community legislation.

This metadata refers to the EEA marine assessment grid, to which all data and assessment results have been spatially mapped in order to ensure that data can be compared in a uniform way across the European regional seas. The marine assessment grid is based on the EEA reference grid system. The EEA reference grid is based on ERTS89 Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area projection with parameters: latitude of origin 52° N, longitude of origin 10° E, false northing 3 210 000.0 m, false easting 4 321 000.0 m. All grid cells are named with a unique identifier containing information on grid cell size and the distance from origin in meters (easting and northing). An important attribute of the EEA reference grid system is that by using an equal area projection all grid cells are having the same area for the same grid size. In this marine assessment grid, two grid sizes are used: * 100 x 100 km in offshore areas (> 20 km from the coastline) * 20 x 20 km in coastal areas (<= 20 km from the coastline) The grid sizes were choosen after an evaluation of data availability versus the need for sufficient detail in the resulting assessment. The resulting assessment grid is a combination of two grid sizes using the EEA reference grid system. The overall area of interest used in the grid is based on the marine regions and subregions under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). Additionally, Norwegian (Barent Sea and Norwegian Sea) and Icelandic waters (’Iceland Sea’) have been added (see Surrounding seas of Europe). Note that, within the North East Atlantic region, only the subregions within EEZ boundaries (~200 nm) have been included.

The Marine Reporting Units (MRUs) are used within the reporting obligations of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) in order to link the implementation of the different articles to specific marine areas. The MRUs can be of varying sizes, according to the appropriate scale for the different reports (e.g. region, sub-region, regional or sub-regional subdivision, Member State marine waters, WFD coastal waters, etc.), as indicated in the Good Environmental Status 2017 Decision. The present data set is the second public version released of the MRUs used during the MSFD 2018 reporting exercise on the update of Articles 8, 9 and 10. Only the MRUs of those countries that have gone through the reporting exercise by June 2020 have been included in this data set. Apart from the countries included already in version 1 of the dataset (SE, FI, EE, LV, PL, DE, DK, NL, BE, FR, ES, HR and RO), this version also includes seven more countries, namely MT, LT, IT, SI, CY, PT and IE. The data set is distributed in SHP and in INSPIRE-compliant GML format, made available also through an INSPIRE compliant ATOM service.