Research Theme 6 will bring together the suite of decision-support tools that are being developed in other work packages. These tools together utilize the Natural Capital Framework and Ecosystem Service values and will allow exploration of the benefits, trade-offs, risks and uncertainties of a range of scenarios for construction, operation and decommissioning of marine artificial structures, while also accounting for other pressures such as fisheries and climate change.

A primary objective will be to gather clear user requirements through stakeholder workshops to enable functionality, accessibility, relevance and understanding of future needs. The StrathE2E tool will be expanded to include MAS scenarios and modelled Ecosystem Service outcomes. A marine net gain (MNG) tool will quantify supply and demand for MNG measures under different MAS scenarios. The ORIESII tool will include evidence on the environmental, social and economic outcomes of MAS, and will feed into the ASPACE tool which will provide optimization of spatial MAS management scenarios to minimize impacts on climate change refugia for biodiversity, carbon sequestration and fisheries. A federated data architecture will be developed with a combined visual interface to provide user access.

Utilising collaborations with other academic projects, WP6 will seek to create opportunities for coupling VALMAS with digital twin frameworks such as SyncED-Ocean.