The University of Mohammed V Agdal hosted the 3rd PEGASO General Meeting in Rabat (Morocco) from 19th to 22nd of March 2013. More than 60 representatives from the PEGASO institutions partners and End Users along with Moroccan experts, researchers and stakeholders attended the meeting.

The partners discussed about the progresses that have been made on the project analyzing every work package and the future tasks to be conducted including the overall analysis of the Integrated Regional Assessment (IRA), the contribution from the CASEs (demonstrating sites) to the different analysis as well as the progress in the functioning of the Integrated Coastal Zone Management (IZCM) governance platform.

Participants also learnt, through several special sessions, about a novel scenario building and decision support tool through the Bayesian Belief Network analysis (BBN). This tool brings together under a graphical based framework, the different elements and its relationships to take into account to aid decision making. The exercise was used to compare two future scenario settings for Mediterranean and Black sea coasts, "Balanced urban development" and "Preserve the wealth (Integrity) of natural capital" by incorporating the different drivers of coastal change and the results on the possible consequences of different situations and its causes.

The other workshop focused on the SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure) map viewer functionalities and capabilities for stakeholders and End Users, and their integration to the Web portal. The workshop also presented the role of the future Atlas in PEGASO and the ICZM platform and its structure. Conceived as part of the SDI, the PEGASO Atlas will present a synthesis of the current spatial information and knowledge from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea coastal environments with different thematic maps and the results from the sustainability indicators, giving an insight into the state of the coasts.

Participants also briefly discussed the EU Draft Directive on Maritime Spatial Planning and Integrated Coastal Zone Management recently released on 13th March. They also debated on the last deliverables to be prepared in the coming months with special focus on the Business Plan for the future of PEGASO. This document will be presented at the end of the project to possible donors who may interested in investing in the follow up of the activities or recommended by the project. The Business Plan strongly intends to contribute to the future of sustainable development of coastal and marine areas in the Mediterranean, in the Black Sea and beyond.

The ideas exchanged during the meeting helped structure the next key steps for the last period of the project - PEGASO that has still 10 months to go. An update of the ICZM questionnaire will be done for the Mediterranean countries, which will serve as a reference basis for the future reporting on the implementation of the ICZM Protocol.

The need for a good overall communication and coordination between all partners and also the regional platforms and local sites was highlighted.