ABSTRACT
The oceans offer good opportunities for sustainable economic development but the growing demand for maritime transport, resource extraction, offshore energy, fisheries and aquaculture, is threatening marine ecosystems and sustainable maritime activities. The rational exploitation of oceans space and resources is crucial to enhance the infrastructures that are being established offshore. In particular, offshore platforms that can combine many functions within the same infrastructure and could offer significant benefits in terms of economics, optimizing spatial planning and minimizing the impact on the environment. Thus, the analysis, design and construction of offshore structures used for the combined activities in the ocean environment are one of the most important studies that need to be performed. Different concepts of multiuse platforms are being developed in various EU-FP7 funded such as TROPOS, MERMAID, H2OCEAN and ORECCA, which are briefly described here.
