Supporting the implementation of the Restore our Ocean and Waters Mission

Expected Outcome:

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Additional regional and local assets (data, models, digital twins) are made available on the DTO core infrastructure, EDITO;
• New digital twin applications, emphasising on regional and local conditions and addressing regional considerations, including stakeholders needs, availability of data, etc.;
• Enhanced digital twin regional capabilities, creating in the EU DTO core infrastructure, EDITO, the conditions to directly support policy implementation, including marine environmental policy, and Blue Economy applications which build on the regional characteristics of the sea-basin;
• Development of regional what-if-scenarios libraries, including confidence thresholds and related analysis, quantifying the necessary conditions to increase confidence levels, etc.;
• Support to monitoring and sustainable management of regional seas with new tailor-made services for regional seas.

Scope:

Proposals should establish regional components within the EDITO core infrastructure of the EU Digital Twin of the Ocean (EU DTO). These regional components should foster the development of local digital twins’ applications: customized digital tools designed to address the unique priorities of specific local stakeholder communities.

For each sea-basin (one project per lighthouse), the objective is to:

• Identify, aggregate and integrate existing regional data (through EMODnet), tools, modelling and local digital twin assets that are not yet widely public (including inland waters assets that are relevant for the integrated source-to-sea approach with emphasis on land-sea connections^[1]) and take the necessary action to make them available through EDITO, following all necessary interoperability and standardisation protocols. Under-represented data types (biologging, acoustic telemetry, etc.) are of particular interest;
• Develop regional digital twin services (tailored applications and services that address region-specific challenges, including for instance small islands challenges, coastal resilience, biodiversity conservation and restoration, pollution, climate change adaptation, fisheries and aquaculture and other sectors of the blue economy). These services should target both policy relevant questions and questions related to the development of a regional sustainable and competitive Blue Economy. To support predictive capacities, regional digital twin developments should in particular look for the integration of long-term ecological and biodiversity monitoring datasets, ensuring that modelling and scenarios are grounded in empirical, time-series observations;
• Foster regional stakeholder engagement (regional authorities, regional sea conventions, industry partners, and local communities) to bring in existing assets (databases, local or regional models) co-design and validate digital twin applications for effective policy-making and operational decision support;
• Improve intensive adoption of innovative algorithms of Artificial Intelligence and big data management;
• Through the aforementioned engagement, and via co-creation processes, develop a range of what-if-scenarios, assess their confidence levels and identify actions towards the improvement of said confidence.

[1] For instances assets identified in the IDEATION CSA and funded under “HORIZON-MISS-2023-OCEAN-01-09 towards the integration of inland waters into the Digital Twin Ocean”. https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101157371