MONITOOL has been one of the projects presented during the workshop taken place on Dublin last November between Dublin City University (DCU) and University of South Australia (UniSA).

Both universities, which have recently signed a research collaboration agreement, have shared information about their projects related with sensors and the different ways of chemical status monitoring on different places and material status.

Dr. Blánaid White, whose research group is developing several projects related, was the responsible to speak about MONITOOL, a project led by DCU. She explained how MONITOOL aims to adapt existing Environmental Quality Standards (EQS; 0.45 µm filtered) to suitable EQS-DGT for passive sampling in order to evaluate the chemical status of the transitional and coastal waters under the WFD.

During her presentation, she highlighted the importance of having a Mediterranean partner as UNICA (Univesità degli Studi di Cagliari). It is expected that they will be able to share their wide knowledge after working on seawater contamination caused by the Costa Concordia shipwreck. MONITOOL involves 8 European partners from 6 different countries and 9 associated partners and it is co-financed by Interreg Atlantic Area.

In addition to this event, MONITOOL project follows its working calendar, including sampling campaigns beginning on January 2018.