Digital Twin of the Ocean: Europe’s game-changer for sustainable seas

euronews (in English)

Our understanding of the world's oceans is set for a quantum leap thanks to artificial intelligence and digital technologies. At the forefront of this revolution is a the EU-funded Digital Twin of the Ocean project.

Transcript

00:00Artificial intelligence and other digital technologies are promising to revolutionize

00:07our understanding of the ocean in the coming years.

00:11But the crucial element is data, and there is an entire ocean of it to collect and process.

00:17We are here in the Adriatic Sea with some of the many scientists gathering data that

00:22helps build the digital twin of the ocean.

00:33Just off the coast, near Meramare Castle in Trieste, bright yellow buoys mark a coastal

00:38observatory, part of Italy's long-term ecological research network.

00:44Since 1986, scientists have returned to this exact spot every month to collect water samples

00:50and take various measurements, building a long-term series of scientific data that reflects

00:55changes in the coastal environment over the years.

01:19Scientists publish the collected data in online databases, making it freely accessible

01:24to marine industries like fishing.

01:26Some of these databases are quite comprehensive, even including reports from citizen scientists.

01:32Researcher Valentina Tirelli developed a free app called Avist App, allowing anyone with

01:38a smartphone to report sightings of marine life.

01:59eModNet, the European Marine Observation and Data Network, collects and shares data from

02:04across Europe.

02:06But manually processing samples, like counting plankton under microscopes, becomes increasingly

02:11challenging.

02:13Artificial intelligence is set to greatly accelerate this process, redefining what is

02:17possible with marine databases.

02:21From Italy's Adriatic Sea, we move to Belgium's North Sea coast.

02:25At the marine station Oostend, researchers from the Flanders Marine Institute are already

02:30using digital cameras and AI to accelerate plankton identification, what once took a

02:35full day in the lab now takes just 30 minutes.

02:38We have AI models that are trained on our specific images that have learned to recognize

02:42all the species.

02:43And so in a matter of minutes, we can actually analyze a sample, get a full species list,

02:48and it saves us a lot of time and money.

02:51And instead of monthly samplings, marine data can now be collected digitally around the

02:55clock.

02:57We took a trip aboard the Belgian research vessel Simon Steven to meet the scientists

03:01making this possible with autonomous underwater platforms equipped with various sensors.

03:11Klaas de Noot leads the European funded project DTO BioFlow, which develops common standards

03:19to feed all types of data into the massive databases of tomorrow.

03:24What we really need is continuous data over time.

03:30We need to really take the pulse of the seas and know what is going on at each and every

03:35minute.

03:36A remote signal releases the buoy, bringing valuable acoustic recordings to the surface.

03:43Researchers collect these recordings from various locations across the Belgian North

03:46Sea.

03:50One practical use is monitoring the presence of harbour porpoises, small marine animals

03:55that play a crucial role as top predators in the local ecosystem.

04:00These animals produce sounds beyond human hearing, but AI algorithms can detect them

04:05in the recordings, allowing researchers to map their movements throughout the year.

04:11This data can help noisy industries, such as offshore wind, plan their activities to

04:16minimize disturbances to marine porpoises.

04:23Over wintertime they are mostly present and then over summer they are less present in

04:27Belgian waters, so that's quite interesting.

04:30It could also be interesting for the offshore industry to plan their activities.

04:37In the near future, all these continuous data streams will converge in a groundbreaking

04:41project, the digital twin of the ocean.

04:44Its core infrastructure, developed through the EU funded EDIDO Infra project, was recently

04:49unveiled at an event in Brussels.

05:08By integrating various data types, this virtual model can become a powerful tool for solving

05:13complex problems.

05:16Simon von Genip from Mercator Ocean International, a non-profit that co-develops the digital

05:22twin, showed how it can be used to address plastic pollution.

05:27Since the 1990s we know all the currents of the ocean at global scale and for every day

05:35as a treasure because we can use it to virtually deploy particles where we think they enter

05:42the ocean from the coast and then we can say well where does virtual plastic particle,

05:47where is it transported by the current the next day and so forth and then eventually

05:51we get an idea of how plastic gets transported in the ocean and so that's what we can do

05:56thanks to model that we cannot obtain from observations we don't have.

06:02Another application, presented by Kelly Johnson from the research institute Herion, focuses

06:07on finding the most effective ways to restore seagrass meadows.

06:10What we're looking at with digital twin of the ocean is the ability to plug in the data

06:14to simulate this if the seagrass beds and meadows were to be bigger, if they were to

06:19be for example planted at certain depths in order to see the impact that seagrass meadows

06:24for example could have on coastal resilience and impacting wave heights and coastal erosion

06:29which we have found already some very interesting results that they do impact these things and

06:33so it's very important for us to be able to test this out.

06:37The digital twin of the ocean promises to be a game changer for policy makers.

06:43It will allow them to model different sea use scenarios and test the realistic outcomes

06:48before making decisions.

06:49How do we sustainably use the ocean because we still need to fish, we need to produce

06:55electricity from the ocean energy, we need to do shipping, we need to lay the cables,

07:00we need to enjoy ourselves as tourists there.

07:03It will be cheaper to make the decisions and to make more correct decisions with less

07:08mistakes if we try to model it before we go out in real life.

07:14From underwater sensors to satellite observations and citizen reports, all this data will merge

07:19in the digital twin.

07:22We want to make sustainable use of this great resource that we call the ocean.

07:27We can only do that if we work together with different countries surrounding the seas putting

07:34all the data that we have together and making it easily accessible.

07:40Once fully launched, the European digital twin of the ocean will make a wealth of ocean

07:44data freely available giving researchers, policy makers, businesses and citizens a futuristic

07:50new tool to benefit from the ocean sustainably.

07:57For more UN videos visit www.un.org

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