Title: research director

Association/Company: Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research ISPRA

Biography
Research director of the Scientific Area “Sustainable aquaculture in inland, transitional and marine waters” at ISPRA. Since 1990 she has carried out research in aquaculture to provide technical and scientific advices to support decision-making processes in aquaculture.
She coordinated more than 50 national/European research projects, in collaboration with the Mediterranean aquaculture sector and international scientific teams. She is currently involved in research projects to improve the environmental performance of aquaculture, through a correct spatial planning of marine areas for aquaculture and the definition of good practices and environmental standards.

Speech session
Next gen aquaculture

Speech
Allocated Zone for Aquaculture (AZA): Technical guide and case studies

Abstract
Since the 2000s, the lack of marine sites allocated for aquaculture activities has limited the development of the aquaculture sector in Europe and Italy. The AZA Technical Guide, drawn up in 2020 by ISPRA for the Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies, is a synthesis of scientific knowledge on the criteria, tools and methods for planning marine areas for aquaculture (AZA), according to principles environmental protection, biodiversity conservation and sustainability. The Technical Guide has associated a geodatabase that contains vector and raster data stored in the ESRI environment and published according to the INSPIRE standard in the @AquaGIS Web App, hosted on ISPRA SINAnet. The WebApp represents an operational decision support tool, available to the Regions and coastal municipalities involved in the management plans for maritime spatial planning (Dir. 89/2014). Some regional case studies on zoning process are illustrated using @AquaGIS Web App.