The forthcoming 5th Steering Committee Meeting of the PEGASO project was held in Barcelona (Spain) on 4-5 September 2013.The objective of the meeting was to discuss the latest developments and achievements of the project, and to plan future activities and outcomes. During the 1st session, the Steering Committee Members presented the most innovative aspects of each Work Package to the new representative of the FP7 Technical Secretariat, Stefan Weiers.

A meeting for several PEGASO partners was organized in Seville (Spain) on 28-29 May 2013, coordinated by the Universidad Pablo de Olavide. The aim of the meeting was to discuss the development of the Integrated Regional Assessment (IRA) and its interrelation with several tools and indicators produced during the project. The Integrated Regional Assessment seeks to provide an overview of governance and the institutional framework and their relation to the various threats and policy programmes.

The Assembly of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO held its 27th Session in Paris from 26 June to 5 July 2013. The IOC Assembly, composed of 145 Member States, meets every two years. It is the main body that approves the IOC´s general policy and main lines of work, including programmes and projects.

One of the major objectives of the European Commission´s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, as expressed during the PEGASO Negotiation Meeting held in Brussels in September 2009, is to assist International Cooperation Partner Countries (ICPC) in building their research capacity. Supporting this objective, the PEGASO project has scheduled several workshops to foster scientific capacity in Southern and Eastern partners in the coming months.

Following the success of the Rabat workshop last March, two new scenario-building exercises using the Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) decision support tool are planned in the coming months.

With the assistance of the University of Nottingham, the University of Balamand in Lebanon and MEDCOAST (the Mediterranean Coastal Foundation) in Turkey, the two workshops will be organized with local stakeholders to analyse possible future scenarios for the Lebanese and Turkish coasts and to facilitate dialogue and an exchange of views among the stakeholders.

The PEGASO project and the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) were presented at the Poctefex Alboran project meeting held in Málaga (Spain) from 19 to 21 June. The Alboran meeting brought together more than 50 administration professionals, university and institutional researchers and NGOs from Morocco and Spain to present and discuss marine protected areas, conservation approaches for cetaceans and marine turtles, how to improve integrated coastal zone management and the development of global change indicators in the Alboran Sea.

The members of the End-User Committee (EUC) are helping the PEGASO partners to prepare the exit strategy for the project. The challenge is to forecast the project results in the medium and long terms. Julien Le Tellier from Plan Bleu pour l´Environnement et le Développement en Méditerranée has interviewed Mihail Costache, a senior advisor in the Directorate of Management and Control of Water and Fisheries Resources of the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change in Romania.

Partners from the PEGASO project took part in the coordination meeting of FP7 projects in the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions that was held in Athens on 13-14 June. This two-day workshop was organized by Vangelis Papathanassiou, the PERSEUS scientific coordinator, and was attended by representatives of 19 projects (CLEANSEA, COCONET, CREAM, EMBLAS, Kill*Spill, JELLYRISK-MED, MARLISCO, MEDINA,MEDISEH, MEDSEA, MERMAID, MISIS, MYOCEAN2, STAGES, ODEMM, PEGASO, PERSEUS, ULIXES, VECTORS).