Honorable Mention of the National Defense and Environment Award 2013

By Joint Order of the Minister of National Defense and the Minister of the Environment, Regional Planning and Energy, published on November 6, 2014, the Honorable Mention of the National Defense and Environment Award 2013 was awarded to the application called “Portuguese ZEE Operational Monitoring and Forecast System – MONIZEE”, presented by the Hydrographic Institute (HI), which is recognized “as worthy of this mention, given the scope and quality of the integration of energy and environmental efficiency concerns in military activity”. It should be noted that the creation of this Prize in 1993 aimed to highlight the concerns of the Armed Forces with the preservation of the country's natural resources.

This application focused on the development of the MONIZEE programme, conducted by the OH, highlighting the modular strategy adopted and the geographical areas that will be covered, depending on the human, material and financial resources capacity of the partners involved, as well as the components that are already operational.

MONIZEE is a strengthening of permanent national infrastructures aimed at monitoring the marine environment and coastal areas, as well as the ability to predict oceanographic conditions in these areas, positioning itself as an important tool in the study and management of the marine environment. On the other hand, the MONIZEE programme is present in the European effort to build a North Atlantic observation and forecasting capacity, both through its inclusion in European observatories (the case of the Joint European Research Infrastructure for Coastal Observatorys - JERICO) and through the declared support of international entities such as EuroGOOS (European association for the creation of a global capacity for operational oceanography).