Published date: 12 October 2018

Last edited date: 12 October 2018

This notice was replaced on 31 January 2019

This notice does not contain the most up-to-date information about this procurement. The most recent notice is:

Awarded contract (published 31 January 2019)

Closed opportunity - This means that the contract is currently closed. The buying department may be considering suppliers that have already applied, or no suitable offers were made.


Contract summary

Industry

  • Environmental services - 90700000

Location of contract

East of England

Value of contract

£110,000

Procurement reference

C18-0355-1268

Published date

12 October 2018

Closing date

31 October 2018

Contract start date

15 November 2018

Contract end date

15 March 2019

Contract type

Service contract

Procedure type

Open procedure (below threshold)

Any interested supplier may submit a tender in response to an opportunity notice.

This procedure can be used for procurements below the relevant contract value threshold.

Contract is suitable for SMEs?

No

Contract is suitable for VCSEs?

No

Description

Growing interest in marine natural capital has highlighted the need to better understand the provision and flow of marine ecosystem services from marine benthic habitats. Knowledge of which organisms exist in a habitat, or the processes performed by those organisms, can be of economic, ecological and cultural value. The impact of extracting resources from the natural capital represented by marine habitats needs to be better understood to promote their sustainable management through conservation advice and protection.
As a proof of concept, JNCC has developed four sublittoral sand models based on a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) modelling approach to predict the probability that ecosystem services will increase or decrease under scenarios of anthropogenic pressures. These were created using VBA in Excel, and have been termed Marine Ecosystem Service Optimisation (MESO) models. The ecological functions, connectivity and flow of processes in each model are underpinned by a Conceptual Ecological Model (CEM) of sublittoral sand (Coates et al., 2016).
Initial proof of concept involved estimating the relationships between the components of the CEM (i.e. BBN nodes) with anthropogenic pressures and ecosystem services. The suite of pressures that arise from oil and gas decommissioning were also estimated and then successfully tested under various stressor scenarios in the MESO model for sublittoral sand. The results showed the probable changes in the provision of ecosystem services as a result of these different scenarios of anthropogenic activities. The results will contribute to JNCC's recommendations for activities that predict the optimum provision of ecosystem services from sublittoral sand habitats.
This project builds on these initial proof-of-concept MESO models for sublittoral sand habitats to improve confidence in the model relationships as well as increase the usability of the models.

More information

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Additional text

You are invited by JNCC Support Co. (JNCC) to submit a tender for the supply of works or services required under the above named project. If interested, you should download and carefully read the documents contained in the zip file or by following the link address.

About the buyer

Contact name

Dora Iantosca

Address

Monkstone House
City Road
Peterborough
PE1 1JY
England

Telephone

01733 866894

Email

dora.iantosca@jncc.gov.uk