![Iliad webinar digital twin series](https://storage.googleapis.com/ocean-twin-cms-content/general_preview_iliad_webinars_367716dfd6/general_preview_iliad_webinars_367716dfd6.png)

The Iliad webinar series is part of the capacity building and community engagement that the Iliad digital twins of the ocean project offers. The topics of the webinars are timely, actual and relevant. The webinars include practical information on a broad variety of topics related to all things digital twins and the ocean. Topics range from ocean modelling and data management, to citizen science and operations of services for the marine sector. Join us every month to share knowledge, discuss, and network with an enthusiastic community of both experts and citizens with an interest in digital twins of the ocean. 

Registration: The webinar is open to ALL. Registration is free but compulsory. Registration link (see table below)

The Iliad webinar series are not the only events that Iliad offers. We organise multiple webinars, side events workshops, summer schools etc - all part of the Iliad Academy.

IMPORTANT NOTES!!!

The webinars take place every second Wednesday of the month at 15:00 CET/CEST

The use of a video camera is not mandatory but is encouraged to facilitate better interaction between the attendees and the speaker(s). 

If you have any questions, and/or you want to know more about the Iliad webinar series, and/or you want to share an idea about a future topic for the webinars, please contact Bente (bente@blb.as) 

**Upcoming webinars**

<table>
  <tr>
    <th>Date</th>
    <th>Topic</th>
    <th>Registration</th>
  </tr>

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    <td>7th June 2023</td>
    <td><a href="https://www.ocean-twin.eu/event/iliad-webinar-series-connecting-ocean-digital-twins-using-federated-system-approaches-in-iliad" target=_"blank">Connecting ocean digital twins using federated system approaches</a></td>
    <td><a href="https://connect.groundstation.space/iliad-webinar-7-june">Register</a></td>
  </tr>
</table>

*We encourage you to share the invitations in your networks and on social media.*

**Previous webinars**

<table>
  <tr>
    <th>Date</th>
    <th>Topic</th>
    <th>Recording/material</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>10th May 2023</td>
    <td><a href="https://www.ocean-twin.eu/event/iliad-webinar-series-standards-in-digital-twins-of-the-ocean" target=_"blank">Standards in Digital Twins of the Ocean</a></td>
    <td>Coming soon</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>12th April 2023</td>
    <td><a href="https://www.ocean-twin.eu/event/iliad-webinar-series-ocean-modelling-in-the-frame-of-digital-twins">Ocean modelling in the frame of digital twins</a></td>
    <td>Coming soon</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>8th March 2023</td>
    <td><a href="https://www.ocean-twin.eu/event/iliad-webinar-series:-citizen-science-for-digital-twins-of-the-ocean-8-10-march-2023-15:00-cet">Citizen science & digital twins of the ocean</a></td>
    <td>Coming soon</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>8th February 2023</td>
    <td><a href="https://www.ocean-twin.eu/event/iliad-webinar-series-introduction-to-data-spaces-for-digital-twins-of-the-ocean">Introduction to data spaces</a></td>
    <td><a href="https://connect.groundstation.space/iliad-webinar-8-february" target="_blank">Recording</a></td>
  </tr>
 <tr>
    <td>13th January 2023</td>
    <td><a href="https://www.ocean-twin.eu/event/webinar:-introduction-to-interoperability-in-iliad">Introduction to interoperability in digital twins of the ocean</a></td>
    <td><a href="https://www.groundstation.space/introduction-to-interoperability-in-digital-twins-of-the-ocean/" target="_blank">Recording</a></td>
  </tr>
</table>

Please, feel free to share the recordings and presentation material in your networks, other training and capacity development sites etc. 


About Iliad

Iliad Webinar Digital Twins of the Ocean Series

The Iliad Webinar Series

<b>Project title:</b> Iliad- INTEGRATED DigitaL Framework FOR Comprehensive MARITIME DATA AND INFORMATION SERVICES

<b>Budget:</b> €18,956,630.00

<b>Project Duration:</b> 36 Months

<b>Partners:</b> 56 partners, 19 countries 

<b>Coordinator:</b> Netcompany-Intrasoft, Kostas Thivaios


Key Project Information

Project Overview

Iliad builds on the assets resulting from two decades of investments in policies and infrastructures for the blue economy and aims at establishing an interoperable, data-intensive, and cost-effective Digital Twins of the Ocean (DTOs). It capitalises on the explosion of new data provided by many different earth sources, advanced computing infrastructures (cloud computing, HPC, Internet of Things, Big Data, social networking, and more) in an inclusive, virtual/augmented, and engaging fashion to address all Earth Data challenges.

The enabling technology of the Iliad DTOs will contribute to the implementation of the EU's Green Deal and Digital Strategy and to the achievement of the UN Ocean Decade's outcomes and Sustainable Development Goals. To realise its potential, Iliad DTOs will follow the System of Systems approach, integrating all existing EU Earth Observing and Modelling Digital Infrastructures and Facilities to promote additional applications through Iliad DTOs, the partners will create the Iliad Marketplace. Like an app store, providers will use the Iliad Marketplace to distribute apps, plug-ins, interfaces, raw data, citizen science data, synthesised information, and value-adding services derived from the Iliad DTOs. 

It will contribute towards a sustainable ocean economy as defined by the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Ocean, a hub for global, multistakeholder co-operation. The Iliad DTOs will fuse a large volume of diverse data, in a semantically rich and data-agnostic approach to enable simultaneous communication with real world systems and models. Ontologies and a standard style-layered descriptor will facilitate semantic information and intuitive discovery of underlying information and knowledge to provide a seamless experience. The combination of geo visualisation, immersive visualisation and virtual or augmented reality allows users to explore, synthesise, present, and analyse the underlying geospatial data in an interactive manner.

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The Iliad Project Overview includes the title, budget, partners, project coordinator, abstract, and the duration of the project. 

Iliad Ocean Twins Project Information and Overview

Iliad Project Information

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INTEGRATED DigitaL Framework FOR Comprehensive MARITIME DATA AND INFORMATION SERVICES

Iliad Project Overview

DT technologies can accelerate innovation, build consensus, and save time and money by iteratively modelling changes, testing how components or systems function, and troubleshooting malfunctions inexpensively in a virtual world. By replicating physical equipment or real-world processes in a virtual environment using DT, a wide array of Blue Economy actors from government, industry and civil society can make faster and better decisions. As an organisation’s portfolio of DT use cases grows, each DT of an asset becomes more impactful. Iliad will set in motion a process aiming to help Blue Economy actors capture the potential value of DT technology by avoiding common pitfalls such as (a) prioritising use cases for DT on the basis of what the 
technology can do, rather than what generates the most value, (b) neglecting to secure proper buy-in and commitment from the end users in the organisation, and (c) underestimating the extent of the changes to the ways people work that are necessary to realise value. This use-oriented approach implies that we will first identify areas where the most value can be generated, and then work out how DT technology can help capture it most efficiently. Consequently, the development of the Iliad DTO will be followed by several essential steps designed to ensure its long-term sustainability. 

These steps will lead us to (1) develop a proof of concept (Prove the value potential, build a simple mockup in a sandbox testing environment, solve the technical issues with a clear plan to capture value) (2) build a minimum viable product (create an end-to-end solution using real-world data. Verify value for end users at all steps, gauge the effort involved in managing change) (3) scale up (roll out a DT on the basis of value and asset similarities, build out the DT by adding functionality, collaborate with asset organisations to ensure fast
adoption) and (4) monitor and capture value (track and monitor value creation closely, install mechanisms that provide feedback to the development team, promote successes and terminate initiatives that fail to deliver value). Besides reshaping the operational and business models of the actors involved, the Iliad DTO introduces a profoundly innovative approach to developing the Blue Economy as it adheres to a paradigm that aligns economic expansion with responsible and sustainable management of ocean ecosystems. 

Three types of opportunities are consistent with this paradigm: 

(1) Those where investments better account for environmental, social and governance (ESG) risk in the planning and execution of activities in the ocean, and where ESG management is both good for business and good for the environment. 

(2) Those where there is a strong business case for investing in the ocean, and where a side benefit of the investment is improving the health of the ocean.

(3) Those where investments are explicitly focused on ocean health and ecosystems. This opportunity captures a whole new paradigm of investments which are “blue” from inception. The vision is to serve an expanding Blue Economy where environmental considerations could underpin and, in some cases, drive business activities.

Accelerating Innovation

Business Development

Digital Twins are changing how technologies such as IoT, AI, ML, and Big Data analytics are being thought about. These innovative technologies will be utilised by Iliad to create virtual representations of physical processes/entities and understand their behaviour, anticipating their possible reactions to simulated events. The Iliad DTO is based on a multi-disciplinary approach and team, playing an important role to advance the current scientific state-of-art. Ocean experts will work with engineers, computer scientists, and process experts to develop an effective (e.g. self-learning) Digital Twin.

<h5> Iliad novelties and innovations </h5>

The need to grasp and deal with major environmental issues, make informed policy decisions, and foster knowledge-driven innovation have been recognised as fundamental and urgent challenges for the future of Europe in all recent relevant key policy documents/The European Green Deal, A European Strategy for Data, and Shaping Europe's digital future. In the report prepared for the European Commission “Mission Starfish 2030: Restore our Ocean and Waters Report of the Mission Board Healthy Oceans, Seas, Coastal and Inland Waters” it is clearly stated that the “aim should be to fully map, sequence, observe and predict our ocean, seas, and rivers. The goal is to build on the existing forecast and climate modelling infrastructures and services (including Copernicus services for marine, climate, coastal, emergency, inland waters, etc.) and pool together all 
available observation data, first at EU-level then globally, into an open-source, easily accessible and understandable interface and matching application and an interactive platform: a Digital Twin of the Ocean.” 

It is in this context that Iliad aims to leverage the experience acquired by previous projects and initiatives to support the implementation of the DestinE initiative to establish a Green Deal Data Space and thus advance in the development of a service infrastructure catering to a wide spectrum of users in full conformity with EU values, legislation, and standards. This endeavour will be connected to the ongoing global process of the almost exponential increase of new data for the ocean, of the number and variety of ocean observing systems as well to the advances in processing techniques and visualisation that rapidly expand our ability to extract information from those data. Iliad DTO will enable different user groups (public, scientific, private) to interact with vast amounts of ocean data and socio-economic information in order to continuously monitor the health of the European Seas (e.g., for climate change induced effects, state of the oceans, biodiversity, coastal and offshore use, natural resources etc.). Utilising the advances in sensing and computing simulation technologies that enable collection and generation of massive data sets every second at different spatio-temporal scales, the Iliad DTO will explore data streaming through IoT domains, while fusing the collected spatio-temporal multi-scaled marine data with data from social media platforms and citizen science apps. Iliad DTO will employ AI techniques to exploit hidden patterns and parametric interrelations to reach an understanding of complex ocean processes on issues like toxic algal blooms, anoxia, marine species environmental preferences and distribution patterns, ecosystemic and socio-economic impacts of extreme events like heat waves, storms, or floods.

Iliad’s ambition is to develop an interoperable, fully integrated, and cost-effective multiplatform network of observing and forecasting systems across European seas, addressing both the open sea and the coastal zone. 

This platform will have the following novel characteristics: 

1. Users will be able to search, retrieve and visualise data for specific parameters within a certain time and space window using a single command interface, irrespective of the data storage.

2. Users will be able to download archived/forecasted information and receive services through a single system.

3. A set of interactive web tools will be developed for the front-end of the platform to allow the user to visualise both the location of data points (using maps) and the data values (using plots/data visualisation layers).

4. Data from numerous observational platforms, systems, and networks will be readily available to end-users through the newly developed platform. Diverse data will enrich the system i.e., with meteorological, hydrological, oceanographical, environmental, underwater heritage and citizen’s science data.

5. Databases will be re-organised, homogenised, and fused to provide data retrieved in a common standard type and format, as well as other types and formats according to end-user requirements.

6. New data will be produced, stored, and exposed through the newly developed system, increasing the spatial and temporal resolution at specific locations (pilots).

7. Novel observation systems (mobile and static) will be developed and tested, and their data will be uploaded to the Iliad DTO. 

8. Operational models will provide forecasts and inform end-users on upcoming changes.

9. Local/regional/national policymakers and end-users will be trained on using the DTO.

The range of disciplines involved will allow the development of a wide and diverse array of applications, replicating in a comprehensive manner ocean processes (past, present, and forecasted in short- and longer-term) and making this knowledge accessible to a multitude of end-users. This is particularly important to contribute to the **European Green Deal (EGD) strategy**, where key objectives are, for example, the adaptation of our Society and economy to the climate change and the risk reduction to natural hazards. Iliad’s ambition is the delivery of interactive virtual tools of the ocean in a unified digital environment. It would empower a shared responsibility to monitor and ensure marine habitat preservation, sustainable marine economic activities, and exploitation of ecosystem services (fisheries, aquaculture, transport, offshore energy, shipping, marine structures, etc.). It will allow assessments of ecosystems and habitats, the impact of human activities and forecasts of their short and long-term changes, development of biodiversity conservation strategies, management of sustainable economic activities, assessment of infrastructure vulnerability, development of mitigation, adaptation, and replacement plans to deal with climate risks and optimisation of emergency responses to severe events such as storm surges.

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The overall ambitions of the Iliad Digital Twin of the Oceans Project.

The Overall Ambitions of the Iliad Digital Twin of the Ocean Project

The Ambitions of Iliad

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State of the art

Digital Twins

With the rapid advancement of cyber-physical systems, DT is gaining ever-increasing attention owing to its great capabilities to realise Industry 4.0. Enterprises from different fields are taking advantage of its ability to simulate real-time working conditions and perform intelligent decision-making, where a cost-effective solution can be readily delivered to meet individual stakeholder demands. The Iliad approach considers the engineering product lifecycle management and business innovation as a whole.   

Consequently, Iliad will strive to connect its activities and results with effective ocean governance policy in the field of environmental protection and harness the generation of the social goods that arise from it, while being inclusive and respecting sustainable business practices. The DTO, though it evolves in a particularly challenging context where specific factors need to be considered (e.g., unstable connectivity and communication networks, a complex natural environment, and a patchwork of competing national and 
international jurisdictions), is steadily gaining momentum. The Iliad DTO will contribute to boosting this momentum by delivering interactive virtual tools of the ocean in a unified digital environment, enabling the creation of virtual replicas of a wide range of physical entities. These can be used for lower-resource simulations of processes involving industry, civil society, and government. The Iliad DTO will empower a shared responsibility to monitor and ensure marine habitat preservation, sustainable marine economic activities, and exploitation of ecosystem services (fisheries, aquaculture, transport, offshore energy, etc.). It will allow assessments of ecosystems and habitats, the impact of human activities and forecasts of their short and long-term changes, development of biodiversity conservation strategies, management of sustainable economic activities, assessment of infrastructure vulnerability, development of mitigation, adaptation, and replacement plans to deal with climate risks and optimisation of emergency responses to severe events such as storm surges.

The Iliad Project will contribute to the underlined Expected Impact from the call as follows:

The action will deliver a digital interactive framework based on digital technologies compatible with Destination Earth and the Digital Package including a digital ocean simulator based on a high-resolution numerical model of the ocean, including available ocean observation datasets in Europe and digital analytic toolboxes to configure the digital ocean simulator and to access what-if scenarios.

The Iliad DTO will be a novel cyber-physical ocean simulator of the ocean, describing and forecasting atmospheric/ocean processes across the catchments, the river-sea systems, the open ocean, the sea-ice, and the pelagic/mesopelagic/benthic environments along with the simulated operations carried out by various marine and maritime actors. The Iliad DTO will reach TRL 8 in which a complete and qualified, federated, cloud-based modeling, and simulation platform will be accomplished. The system will provide access to all available observation datasets, enriched by the internally collected data at all pilot locations, leveraging HPC infrastructure, software, AI applications, and analytics. High-resolution digital replicas (the localised DT) will be developed at each location by deploying a high number of low-cost sensors, developed, and tested in other H2020 projects, to collect RT data from various marine/maritime operators. Numerical models, standard and thematic, will downscale existing coarser grids reaching a super-resolution reconstruction of ocean processes. 

A series of ‘what-if’ scenarios will test the representativeness of the digital ocean simulator under “real conditions of use”. The Iliad DTO will be associated with a set of Toolboxes for Data Analytics and AI modelling, for Semantic Information Analysis, for Social Media monitoring, and for Citizen Science integration. Complementing the core European existing operation ocean forecasting and ocean climate services provided by Copernicus to the European public, scientific and private users, with a simulation capacity that will enable the plug-in of vertical applications based on innovative solutions (sectorial methods, coupled models, statistical approaches, assimilation, ensembles, massive computing, deep learning, etc.) to support science-driven policies implementation.

Through the Iliad DTO data collected from existing EU Observing and Modelling Digital Infrastructures and Facilities (mostly from GOOS, Copernicus Marine, Land, Atmosphere, Climate, Security and Emergency, EEA, ESA, etc.) and from other initiatives and networks will be made easily accessible and presentable in a comprehensive manner, allowing the multi-sectoral marine and maritime actors (managers, stakeholders, policy makers, and citizens) to benefit from ocean digitisation. Data interoperability approach will ensure the implementation of multi-use concept achieving sustained, integrated, and ‘fit-for-purpose’ data, covering the needs of local users. Coupled numerical models (standardised and thematic) will produce highly accurate forecasts per sectorial case, assimilating data from local sensors, while production and socio-economic parameters and indices will be merged to environmental using low and high-level data fusion, data mining, patterns recognition, Machine and Deep Learning, Event Detection Algorithms. The Geovisualisation of ocean data through the DTO, enriched with the aggregation and interpretation of data and metadata Semantic Information will illustrate to users in useful and attractive way the wealth and capacities of existing European and Global Ocean Observing Systems, while enabling an interactive data exploration, synthesis, and presentation by users.

Moving towards a European Ocean Observing System, fully integrated with multidisciplinary PS of estuarine, coastal and marine environments and socio-ecological systems, and promoting shared data management strategies (infrastructure development, data standardisation, sharing, availability, access, interoperability, visualisation, and use of data according to the FAIR principles).

Iliad will focus on a set of well-selected pilot locations, being areas with limited data coverage and high-resolution ocean modeling capacities, hosting a multitude of end-users, with interesting socio-ecological interactions across watersheds, coastal, shelf, and open seas, in which socio-economic and environmental/ecological data will be merged and qualitative and quantitative modelling techniques will be employed, leading towards scenario analysis and integrated ecosystem assessments. 

The impact of climate change on the already stressed socio-ecological systems will be assessed and adaptive strategies will be built to ensure sustainability. Iliad will place emphasis on sharing data and Best Practices among pilots and with other H2020 projects, in terms of low-cost sensors development, IoT sensory integration, data harmonisation, cloud platform architecture and optimisation, geo-visualisation, socio-economic data extraction and merging, data fusion, and AI techniques, and inclusive end-user engagement. 
Support science-driven approaches to policies implementations by users that reinforce conservation and ecosystem-based management of marine habitats/green infrastructure, improve the planning and management of marine areas, and safeguard productivity and biodiversity of marine ecosystems and how this is influenced by the river-to-sea interaction; in each Iliad Pilot Site, the ecosystem-based approach will be followed to address local environmental challenges while promoting sustenance (economic, social, cultural). For example, issues like watershed land uses, waterways nutrient overload, eutrophication and HAB alerts, benthic anoxia, impacts on habitats, and other related adverse effects will be closely studied and will be associated with coastal morphodynamics and exchanges, marine spatial planning, and socio-economic indicators. The presence of invasive species and jellyfish outbreaks in ecosystems will be addressed by examining their favourable ocean/environmental conditions through ML and DL tools and ‘what-if’ climate change scenarios will be built. 

Overall, Iliad will merge and aggregate ocean, biodiversity and socio-economic marine and maritime parameters, apply intelligent algorithms to resolve, and optimise specific end-users issues of broader sectoral interest. Increase citizen engagement, taking into account cultural and emotional aspects, through increased awareness and understanding of the dynamics, interactions and evolution of seas and oceans and their role in our well-being and survival, promoting bottom-up actions, empowering citizens in innovative co-designed services, and new project designs where citizens' opinions are considered from the initial stages.

The Iliad venture highlights the interactions of people and the marine realm, as mediated through technology. Citizens will be approached online to share their experience and observations at sea, express their emotions, concerns and opinions and propose joint solutions alongside scientists and other stakeholders to oceanic challenges such as marine plastic pollution and littering, jellyfish outbreaks and marine conservation. Big Data sets created by this process will be screened for QA and twinned to promote collaborative opportunities and direct action to curb and face the ocean challenges. Citizen science often addresses regulatory gaps and mismatches through voluntary actions (Guerrini et al., 2018). The proposed Citizen Science initiative will 
address such gaps, with several main goals in mind: 1. Collection of biological, ecological, and spatio-temporal data from the public about threat distribution to be analysed, modelled, and forecasted. 2. Monitor threat distribution in real-time and display it in online maps to inform both decision-makers and the public of the state of beaches 3. Educate the public and empower participants to communicate and act to resolve challenges in marine nature, pollution distribution and human-nature interactions, understand how to avoid and prevent threats and turn them into commercial, educational, or even medical opportunities. A long-term ongoing impact is expected from establishing this project, as both empowered humans and the online structures developed are expected to last and operate for decades to come.

Encourage and enable the infusion of ‘non-scientific data streams’, in a coordinated way, through citizens engaged in data gathering, and through joint efforts from a community composed of users of the sea, including private companies, public authorities, social innovators, researchers, citizens and policy makers; Iliad will develop and extend dedicated internet websites to feature detailed information on identification and characteristics of marine threats such as jellyfish, marine macro and micro plastics, illegal fishing and other threats. Citizens, the private sector, and decision-makers will be engaged in a wide array of activities to elicit opinion and position about marine challenges faced along beaches and how to translate these into actionable items Iliad will set 'mass' 'investigation and education' or 'Level 1 crowdsourcing' (Haklay 2012) project; where citizens are used as sensors of the natural environment and scientists formulate research questions and analyse collected data to answer them. These may be augmented to include Level 3 'participatory science' aspects of citizen contribution by the empowerment of groups of participants that include surfers, fishers, divers, swimmers, marine school students, and other marine stakeholders. Iliad will offer extensive training and activities enhancing the value of these semi-scientific data streams such as lectures, workshops, epidemiological sting surveys, social networking, photography competitions, data analysis sessions and hackathons, and training in advising policymakers. In the data analysis stage, these participants will be defined as 'gold users' and their input will help QA and calibrate general public reports. 

Policymakers, private sector and the public at the regional, national, and local levels will be approached during the project in interviews and workshops for prioritising actions on the challenges identified by public participation. Support industry to develop new business models and opportunities in ocean data and related services.

The Iliad Marketplace will offer additional business models and opportunities for industry to provide ocean data and related services that can be integrated directly into and interoperate with the DTO as well as access to the apps, plug-ins and data sources of the global community of practitioners, thus encouraging further synergistic development and expansion of market opportunities for all ocean services. Iliad’s BTBIF will solicit and support business and product innovation, accelerating developments in ocean data and related services.

Facilitate the operationalising of long term observing systems and contribute to the objectives of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. The Iliad DTO will provide the necessary innovative tools to bring together scientists, policy makers, implementing authorities, and other users to collaborate on monitoring and implementing the objectives of the EGD, Digital Strategy, and the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. Through co-design, outreach, and training activities (webinars, workshops, toolkits, etc.), hackathons, assessments, multi-national discussions, we will facilitate collaboration on data availability, accessibility, science-driven decision making, citizen-engagement, and transparency of policymaking and implementation. Thus, the Iliad DTO will also help reinforce dialogues on the science-policy interface, as well as drive multidisciplinary approaches by integrating new technologies pertaining to natural, social, and engineering sciences, while ensuring local knowledge is preserved and integrated via citizen engagement and input. The Iliad DTO will aim to create new value to Ocean Services and Sciences by making openly available new tools that help multiple sectors in ocean monitoring, governance, and sustainability.

The implementation of the Iliad DTO solution will lead to the generation of important key exploitable results and the novel knowledge produced paves the way for streamlining Marine Observation and making it accessible to all. The Iliad DTO will build on the existing forecast and climate modelling infrastructures and services (including Copernicus marine services) and pool together all available observation data, at EU-level, into an open-source, easily accessible and understandable interface, and matching application and an interactive DTO. This infrastructure will allow the development of trusted and fit for purpose science-based deliverables (observation system, modelling capacity, maps) that can be used as services that will help address the main challenges for our sea, notably unsustainable footprint, climate change, lack of understanding, connection and investment, and inadequate governance. The Iliad DTO services will be used to develop tailored applications that can help track pollution, climate change and impacts of human activities in real-time. They can be used by all economic actors, public authorities and civil society, to monitor, observe and enable actions on pollution, climate areas of priority, maritime spatial planning, safe navigation and support civil society’s participation in ocean and water governance and policymaking. They will serve as risk-management tools for the financial and insurance sectors to assess sustainability credentials of investments. In addition, sequencing the DNA of our ocean and waters, as a common public good, will offer immense opportunities to discover new molecules and biotechnologies for the wellbeing and health of European citizens. By closing these knowledge gaps, the Iliad DTO will contribute to sustainable Blue Growth and to the regeneration of our seas.

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The expected results and impacts from the Iliad Digital Twin of the Ocean Project.

The Expected Impacts from the Iliad Project

Expected Impacts of Iliad

Connecting activities with effective ocean governance

Expected Impacts

In the first step, WP1 will gather the different user requirements from all partners for each DT. This will allow the identification of similarities, synergies, and differences between them in terms of data and technology available, geographical localisation, and space/time discretisation. The first iteration with the stakeholders will then be organised to match their expectations and needs. Looking across these and other established policy and operations environments in the EU and globally, an architecture will be defined as a framework for the Iliad DTO to assure interoperability and efficiency across the development and future operations. Consistent with the interfaces and structure defined by the architecture, the first DTs will be created. From there, an agile cycle of stakeholder reviews and DT implementations will occur with maturity phases identified in milestones along the program development path. A final evaluation of each DT will take place at the end of the project. 

Iliad approach will bring data acquisition, usage of AI, modern modelling capabilities, and visualisation to the next level by:

(i) Broad adoption and use through engaging from an early stage the users and stakeholders in a co-design process.

(ii) Rapid development by capitalising on various works previously and currently done around the world.

(iii) Effective contributions of science to society by open dissemination with advanced visualisation of new data and the outcomes of the project as well as the critical methods/best practices, progressively and directly to the users. 

It will be a platform of platforms, or a SoS, and work transparently with all data sources, models, and sensors. It will permit different levels of details and fidelity, with an integrated DT based on independently accessed data, models, or a hybrid concept. Iliad, by targeting DTs for GreenDeal topics will favour priority needs of the European Union and provide trusted resources for informed policy, business decisions, and use by citizens of the European society and beyond. 


 Creation and Validation

Approach for Digital Twin

The Iliad Methodology is based on user-driven agile development with yearly increments and iteration, including co-design and active participation from the involved stakeholder groups as depicted in the above table with Phases and Milestones. 

The co-design of the development and operational process for the Iliad DTO involves integrating digital twins (DTs), capitalising on existing data, methods, tools, and infrastructures. The process will first create and validate requirements and then define the mock-ups which lead to product definitions (MVP). These DTs are both market-push and technology-driven and are representative of several European seas. A modern agile development procedure is used where the DTs are very early in the project phase setup (rapid-prototypes) and iteratively improved with technology, data, models, and user feedback from Iliad’s other work packages. Several rounds of implementation (agile development) by the partners and stakeholder engagements will successively occur once a DT milestone is achieved. Indicators for the WP1 success will be three project milestones. The first one is the creation of the mock-ups, the second is the implementation of already available data, models, and technologies, and the last one is the successful completion of the DTs designs and their integration into the Iliad DTO. 

Different platforms, funded by the EU or outside of the EU, already exist and provide valuable data. These data will be used as a starting point for each DT created by Iliad in WP1, and the rationale for selection and incorporation of existing DTs into Iliad. The novelties of Iliad, mirrored in this WP1 are manifold: 

- Iliad system will interact with all existing data platforms, i.e. it will be a Platform of platforms or SoS – the Digital Twin of the Ocean (DTO) will become a Twin of Twins.

- Iliad is a data-source, model, AI model, and sensor agnostic.

- Iliad is an open SoS that can expand as DTO emerge and technologies evolve.

- Iliad will adopt the ocean community best practices and contribute additional ones that are not already available.

- In Iliad, modelling capacities will significantly improve the spatial and temporal resolution of all digital representations. A data-only approach is not accurate enough for several DT cases.

- Iliad will address the full scope of data and information – their values, their uncertainties, their provenance.

- Iliad will consider state-of-the-art software development, verification, validation, deployment methodologies at both the component and system level.

- Iliad will consider user engagement from the beginning of the co-designing process and involve the users and stakeholders in the whole process. This is a multi-disciplinary approach including natural and social sciences as well as business and policy.

- Iliad will accommodate new and emerging sensors and data such as eDNA and ocean topography.

Each of these milestones sets the ground for advance in all subsequent WPs. It should also be noted that the engagement rounds results might steer the work of the other WPs to answer the needs of the stakeholders better and ensure the relevance of the outcome of Iliad. A final technical evaluation of the DTs, at the end of the agile development process, will be performed prior to the final assessment by the users in other WP. It is anticipated that there will be lessons learned and technology evolution during the program and the architecture and its implementation will allow for that adaptability. The UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainability will be evolving in parallel to this project and a cross-fertilisation with the Ocean Decade programmes is expected and will be encouraged. While the initial work of the project is focused on the European seas, the open infrastructure design and construct of DT has broad applicability beyond Europe.

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The Iliad Methodology is based on user-driven agile development with yearly increments and iteration.

The Methodology of Iliad (Digital Twin of the Ocean)

The Iliad Methodology

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Agile driven development

<table>
   <thead>
      <tr>
         <th>Indicator</th>
         <th>EU Blue Economy 2018</th>
      </tr>
   </thead>
   <tbody>
      <tr>
         <td>
            Turnover
         </td>
         <td>
            €650 billion
         </td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td>
            Gross value added
         </td>
         <td>
            €176 billion
         </td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td>
            Gross profit
         </td>
         <td>
            €68 billion
         </td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td>
            Employment
         </td>
         <td>
            4.5 million
         </td>
      </tr>
      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td>
            Net investment
         </td>
         <td>
            4.5 million
         </td>
      </tr>
      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td>
            Net investment ratio
         </td>
         <td>
            3.6%
         </td>
      </tr>
      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td>
            Average annual salary
         </td>
         <td>
            €24,020
         </td>
      </tr>
   </tbody>
</table>

*Notes: Turnover is calculated as the sum of the turnover in each sector; it may lead to double counting along the value chain. Nominal values. Direct impact only. Net investment excludes maritime transport and coastal tourism. Net investment ratio is defined as net investment to GVA.*




The EU blue economy report 2021

EU Blue Economy 2018

The 2020 edition of the <b>EU Blue Economy Report</b> estimates that the established sectors of the EU Blue Economy directly employed close to 5 million people and generated around €750 billion in turnover and €218 billion in gross value added in 2018. The Blue Economy emerging and innovative sectors include Marine renewable energy (i.e. Ocean energy, floating solar energy, and offshore hydrogen generation), Blue bioeconomy and biotechnology, Marine minerals, Desalination, Maritime defence, and Submarine cables. 


The project will drive forward the structural integrity management of offshore assets by combining fully detailed structural simulation models with sensor data and big data analytics. Through its diverse user network, the ILIAD project will enable businesses involved in the Blue Economy to increase safety, reduce costs and optimise production. In parallel, it will offer to public authorities a powerful way of using simulation to support the implementation of the nexus of policies with ambitious targets and actions adopted by the EU, seeking to protect the marine environment and biodiversity across Europe.

These sectors offer significant potential, especially as regards renewable energies where the EU is in the lead hosting 70 % of global ocean energy (wave and tidal) installed capacity in its waters. The Maritime defence sector accounts for over 177 000 jobs and within Blue bioeconomy sector, the algae sector generated an estimated turnover of over €350 million. Maritime activities are dependent on the natural capital (either abiotic, biotic or both) held in Europe’s seas. Blue Economy activities are entirely dependent on the environmental condition of European seas and oceans affecting their capacity to provide ecosystems services. The ILIAD DTO will equip Blue Economy actors with tools to upgrade planning and operational standards - using big data to deliver new insights for businesses, government, and society. 

EU Blue Economy directly employed close to 5 million people and generated around €750 billion in turnover and €218 billion in gross value added in 2018. 

Iliad (Digital Twin of the Ocean) Project and Blue Growth

The Iliad Project and Blue Growth

Emerging & Innovative Sectors 

Blue Growth

The <b>Iliad Marketplace</b> will be akin to a mobile phone app store where developers and other providers of apps, plug-ins, interfaces, raw data, citizen science data, synthesised information, increased functionality, and value-adding services compatible with the Iliad DTO can market, distribute and sell their applications. This allows additional existing digital twins and similar applications to interoperate with the DTO, providing users even more thematic information, services, models, scenarios, simulations, forecasts, and visualisations. This creates a global digital distribution platform for ocean software, applications, and data sources to increase the functionality and value of DTO. 

Ensuring its continuous development and evolution in line with the ever-changing needs of future users and the ever-advancing technology improvements. Various business models and revenue models will be explored in the Technology Transfer and Business Development work package to decide on the most viable model. A specific promotion strategy will be developed in the Outreach, Communication, and Dissemination work package to ensure app developers and data providers become aware of the Iliad Marketplace and its benefits and incentives. 

This will contribute greatly to maintaining and operating DTO beyond the funding period by creating a source of revenue driven by the global community of practitioners.

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Innovative apps for thwe Blue Economy

Iliad Marketplace

The Iliad DTO will drive innovation by building an infrastructure capable to develop trusted and fit for 
purpose science-based deliverables (observation system, modelling capacity, and maps) that can be used by industry, government, and civil society to better understand the needs of customers, citizens, communities, and improve the relevant services and products. By integrating assets related to seas and oceans (data, models, physical ocean observatories at sea) with digital technologies (cloud, super high-performance computing capacities, artificial intelligence, and data analytics) into a digital component, the Iliad DTO will offer a consistent high-resolution, multi-dimensional description of the ocean. It will propose a simulator to test scenarios that deal with different evolutions of the ocean environment according to climate scenarios, 
anthropogenic stressors, or Green Deal policy strategies. 

It will empower citizens, governments, and industries to collectively share the responsibility to monitor, preserve and enhance marine and coastal habitats, while supporting also a sustainable blue economy (fishing, aquaculture, transport, renewable energy, etc.). The Iliad DTO will be a disruptive value creation system that will generate numerous innovative solutions for diverse users. It will strengthen SMEs' services and contribute to ensure a highly competitive position in European and international markets, thereby creating and protecting jobs, increasing revenues to allow further investment and technological developments. It will allow civil society to check assertions by public authorities. 

Furthermore, the effort required to assemble and process data from different sources and of a different nature is an obstacle to innovation. Once this obstacle is removed, a whole host of new products and services built on multiple sources of data can be developed. It will showcase the "Big Data" thesis, i.e. "analysing large data sets—big data—will become a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus". 

The Iliad Marketplace is a key aspect contributing to driving innovation by facilitating access to all developers in the field of ocean related services to the DTO, providing them with vastly more public domain data, synthesised information, services, models, scenarios, simulations, forecasts, and visualisations, as well as connecting practitioners across the world to stimulate both competition and collaboration, ultimately leading to new products and services.

The Iliad DTO will drive innovation by building an infrastructure capable to develop trusted and fit for purpose science-based deliverables.

Iliad (Digital Twin of the Ocean) is Increasing Innovation

Increasing Innovation

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Science-based deliverables

The Iliad Project's Digital Blue Growth Hub is a platform that aims to unlock the ocean industry's potential. The hub wishes to bring together various groups to drive progress in areas such as sustainability, education, and capacity development.

The Digital Blue Growth Hub is designed to encourage collaboration and provide a platform for open and multidisciplinary engagement to improve industry standards. It performs various functions, including internal project dialogue, coordinating user surveys and stakeholder engagement, and gathering insights into user needs and expectations. By doing so, the hub helps advance project policy objectives such as promoting business start-up innovation and development activities.

The Digital Blue Growth Hub wishes to link with other digital twins of the ocean and key global and regional institutions to promote innovation and drive progress in the industry. It also facilitates science-policy links, supporting the advancement of policy objectives that promote sustainability, and other key goals.

By fostering collaboration, advancing knowledge, and promoting sustainable development, the hub will help unlock the full potential of the ocean and drive progress in areas such as marine conservation and aquaculture.

The Digital Blue Growth Hub wishes to create external collaborations such as EDITO workshops, DITTO meetings, Task Forces, and Global Forums. We are committed to building partnerships with other players in the field of marine research, blue economy, digital twin of the oceans, and others from both academia and industry.

Through these collaborations, we hope to further promote sustainable development and unlock the full potential of the ocean industry. We believe that by bringing together different groups and expertise, we can drive progress and tackle complex challenges in the industry.

Join us in building partnerships and advancing knowledge to unlock the potential of the ocean industry through our Digital Blue Growth Hub.

![Blue Growth Hub Abstract.jpeg](https://storage.googleapis.com/ocean-twin-cms-content/Blue_Growth_Hub_Abstract_56e39a6872/Blue_Growth_Hub_Abstract_56e39a6872.jpeg)


The Digital Blue Growth Hub is designed to encourage collaboration and provide a platform for open and multidisciplinary engagement to improve industry standards.

The Iliad Webinar Series

Wind Energy

Renewable Energy from the Ocean: Currents, Waves & Floating Solar

Fisheries & Aquaculture

Marine Traffic & Harbour Safety

Pollution

Met Ocean Data: Hind, Now & Forecasts

Biodiversity Assessments & Monitoring

Insurance for Marine & Maritime Activities

Date	Topic	Recording/material
10th May 2023	Standards in Digital Twins of the Ocean	Coming soon
12th April 2023	Ocean modelling in the frame of digital twins	Coming soon
8th March 2023	Citizen science & digital twins of the ocean	Coming soon
8th February 2023	Introduction to data spaces	Recording
13th January 2023	Introduction to interoperability in digital twins of the ocean	Recording