An exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is a sea zone prescribed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea over which a state has special rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources, including energy production from water and wind. It stretches from the baseline out to 200 nautical miles (nmi) from its coast. In colloquial usage, the term may include the continental shelf. The term does not include either the territorial sea or the continental shelf beyond the 200 nmi limit. The difference between the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone is that the first confers full sovereignty over the waters, whereas the second is merely a "sovereign right" which refers to the coastal state's rights below the surface of the sea. The surface waters, as can be seen in the map, are international waters.
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Within the MSP Challenge Game the EEZ indicates the Planning Region of a team. Planning outside of your team's EEZ requires the team who's border is crossed to approve the plan before implementation.
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For Scotland/England boundaries: United Kingdom, Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies Limits and Boundaries Dataset, UK Hydrographic Office, Jan 19, 2023, licensed under the Open Government Licence. Downloaded from datahub.admiralty.co.uk.
License: Open Government Licence (OGL)
For all other boundaries:
Adapted from Flanders Marine Institute (2023). Maritime Boundaries Geodatabase: Maritime Boundaries and Exclusive Economic Zones (200NM), version 12. Available online at https://www.marineregions.org/. https://doi.org/10.14284/632.
License: CC BY 4.0
For Scotland/England boundaries: UK Hydrographic Office Maritime Limits and Boundaries
For all other boundaries: Marineregions: intersect of EEZs and IHO areas
For Scotland/England boundaries: The UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) comprises areas of the sea bed and subsoil beyond the territorial sea over which the UK exercises sovereign rights of exploration and exploitation of natural resources. The Continental Shelf (Designation of Areas) Order 2013 (made 31 March 2014) delineates the shelf and replaced two previous Orders, dating to 2000 and 2001 that had been made under powers in The Continental Shelf Act 1964. This is modified version from the UKHO Law of the Sea department data, available via https://www.gov.uk/guidance/inspire-portal-and-medin-bathymetry-data-archive-centre.
Maritime Boundaries and Exclusive Economic Zones from the VLIZ Maritime Boundaries Geodatabase. Boundaries have been built using information about treaties between coastal countries. When treaties are not available, median lines have been calculated. An exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is a seazone extending from a state's coast or baseline over which the state has special rights over the exploration and use of marine resources. Generally a state's EEZ extends 200 nautical miles out from its coast, except where resulting points would be closer to another country. This dataset also contains delimitation of overlapping claims, court rulings and joint regimes.
For Scotland/England boundaries: 2013-03-01
For all other boundaries: 2023-01-01
The layer was clipped to the extend of our area of interest in the North Sea. The geometry errors and duplicates were fixed; and the geometry was simplified to implement the layer in the MSP Challenge. Both layers were reprojected to Lambert's Azimuthal Equal Area (EPSG:3035) projection, The UK boundary was split in 2: the English and the Scotish parts based on the 12 Nautical Miles (12M) limit - Scottish territorial seas - Territorial Sea Act 1987 / Scotland Act 1998 layer . The attributes table was also reduced; attributes with empty fields for all features were removed.
For the Sand Extraction Edition of the MSP Challenge the EEZ was slightly adjusted to align with the Rijkswaterstaat layers related to sand extraction.
Rijkswaterstaat
grens_cp
Existing polygons were adjusted to align with this borderline.
This layer is a combination of 2 sources:
Flanders Marine Institute (2012): Intersect of IHO Sea Areas and Exclusive Economic Zones.
HELCOM (2019): Exclusive Economic Zone.
Flanders Marine Institute (2012): Combination of the information on regional seas and national maritime boundaries.
HELCOM (2019): "The dataset contains the digitized Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) boundaries in the Baltic Sea based on the documents submitted by the Baltic Sea countries to the United Nations. These submissions, which are available online (http://www.un.org/depts/los/LEGISLATIONANDTREATIES/europe.htm), include nautical charts, maritime boundary delimitation agreements, and treaties between different countries (containing the agreed coordinates of the boundaries). In case of non-existing submission, the older EEZ version was used resulting from various HELCOM activities. The dataset has been amended with bilateral agreements, when available." Description retrieved from HELCOM's metadata page for this resource (2021-07-20)
The layer from Flanders Marine Institute (2012) was clipped to the extend of our area of interest in the Baltic Sea (as defined in ICES Ecoregions, retrieved in 2017) and Kattegat (as defined in ICES Areas, retrieved in 2017). The geometry errors and duplicates were fixed, the geometry was simplified to implement the layer in the MSP Challenge. The data was also reprojected to Lambert's Azimuthal Equal Area (EPSG:3035) projection.
The layer was updated on 2020-11-30 using the new version of the Exclusive Economic Zone of HELCOM (2019). The base layer is the one from Flanders Marine Institute (2012), the polygons were edited to match the boundaries of HELCOM (2019).
The EEZ layer in the Western Baltic Sea Edition remains consistent with that featured in the Baltic Sea edition.
Not Applicable, see Local Authority Areas.
Not Applicable, see National Planning Areas.
Not applicable.
This layer is not available in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.
See National Planning Areas.
Co-funded by the European Union.