Status of the project October 2013

Following contract negotiations the project started on the 1st of September 2012. The kick off meeting was held in Brussels, with representatives from all partners at the end of September. At the time of writing the project has effectively been running a year since the kick off meeting; and what a year! The project really started by jumping in at the deep end with all Work Packages effectively starting simultaneously.

The satellite imagery and data for the development of WPs 1 and 2, along with the collection of the first geophysical data sets on the sites in Denmark and Greece, have all successfully been gathered. Equipment has been developed and tested in WPs 3 and 6 in the first phase of field work on the various sites in the project over the Spring and Summer of 2013. It is only through the extremely hard work of all consortium members both in the office, laboratory and in the field that the project has reached this far and is still on track. The winter of 2013 will see the further development of the models and databases in Work Packages 1 and 2. Work Package 3 will see refinement of equipment after the steep learning curve from the first field seasons trials and laboratory work to study the deterioration of organic materials will start. Work package 4 will see the further development of the hand held wood tester and Work package 5 will see evaluation of the methods trialled so far and further development of proofs of concepts for how best raise to raise fragile artefacts. The sea grass mats from WP 6, which have now been placed on site will be monitored, where possible, after winter storms to study their effects.

The overall aim of the project is to synthesise the results of the Work Packages into two guidelines which will be published in 2015 but a progress report of the first year’s results is available as a downloadable pdf.

See here for the SASMAP progress report 2012-2013.

David Gregory