BRIDGES (Bringing together Research and Industry for the Development of Glider Environmental Services) will provide a necessary tool for further understanding, improved monitoring, and responsible exploitation of the marine environment while assuring its long-term preservation. This new tool, a robust, cost-effective, re-locatable, versatile and easily-deployed ocean glider, will support autonomous, long-term in-situ exploration of the deep ocean at large spatio-temporal scales. The sole European underwater glider: SeaExplorer will be modularized, new sensors will be developed, and the operational methodology will be modified, such that new horizons of service will be opened. It will be improved by: 1) adapting for deep basins (up to 5000 m), 2) implementing a novel payload architecture to increase autonomy and to accommodate the range of sensing capabilities needed, and 3) integrating the associated control support system for single and networked operations (mission behaviour, data management, planning, communications). The glider’s sensing capabilities will be enhanced. The main modules are planned for: 1) environmental monitoring for facilitating the effective implementation of an ecosystem-based management under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, 2) the oil and gas industry, and 3) the deep sea mining industry. In order to achieve the technological objectives and meet service requirements, an open dialogue between stakeholders will be developed. The basic premises of the present call “Delivering sub-sea technologies for new services at sea-BG-06-2014,” are answered thoroughly: the ability to execute unmanned underwater operations, to operate in the deep ocean, and to assess the environmental impact of the maritime economy. In addition, this project will realize and promote the creation of collaborations among sensor and platform manufacturers, oil and gas and mining companies, public health and safety departments, and scientific and engineering experts.

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 Twin of the Ocean (DTO). It capitalizes 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. 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 DTO 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 geovisualisation, immersive visualization and virtual or augmented reality allows users to explore, synthesize, present, and analyze the underlying geospatial data in an interactive manner. The enabling technology of the ILIAD DTO 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 realize its potential, ILIAD DTO 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 DTO, 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, synthesized information, and value-adding services derived from the ILIAD DTO.

ODYSSEA will develop, operate and demonstrate an interoperable and cost-effective platform that fully integrates networks of observing and forecasting systems across the Mediterranean basin, addressing both the open sea and the coastal zone. The platform will collect its data from the many databases maintained by agencies, public authorities, and institutions of Mediterranean EU and non-EU countries, integrating existing earth observation facilities and networks in the Mediterranean Sea building on key initiatives such as Copernicus, GEOSS, GOOS, EMODNet, ESFRI, Lifewatch, Med-OBIS, GBIF, AquaMaps, Marine IBA e-atlas, MAPAMED and others with marine and maritime links. Through ODYSSEA’s end-user centred approach, in which the various groups of end-users and stakeholders, within and external to the Consortium, will be involved from Day 1 of the project in the design, development and operation of the platform, including identification of gaps in data collection and accessibility. High priority gaps will be filled through multiple approaches that include developing a network of coastal observatories, deploying novel in-situ sensors at sea (a.o. microplastic sensors), oceanographic modelling and integrating existing mobile apps for citizen scientist networks. Applying advanced algorithms to organise, homogenise and fuse the large quantities of data in common standard type and format as well as other types of formats, the ODYSSEA platform will provide both primary data and on-demand derived data services, including forecasts, from ALL Mediterranean countries through a SINGLE PUBLIC PORTAL to various end-user groups and stakeholders. End-user requirements will drive the creation of secondary data sets which the platform will provide as new and packaged services matching the specialised information needs of users. ODYSSEA will improve accessibility to existing data as well as increase the temporal and geographic coverage of observational data in the Mediterranean.

TRIDENT aims to contribute to a sustainable exploitation of seabed mineral resources, by developing a reliable, transparent and cost-effective system for prediction and continuous environmental impact monitoring of exploration and exploitation activities in the deep sea. This system will develop and integrate technology and novel solutions to operate autonomously in remote areas under extreme conditions, and provide real-time data to permitting and supervising authorities. The effective monitoring and inspection system to be developed will comply with international and national legal frameworks. TRIDENT will identify all relevant physical, chemical, geological and biological parameters to be measured at the sea surface, mid-water and seabed. The project will also identify gaps in existing data sets and develop solutions to address them. These are essential steps to develop statistically robust environmental baselines, establish reliable indicators of good environmental status and define thresholds for significant impact, enabling the standardization of tools and methods. The project consortium will subsequently develop and test an integrated system of static and mobile observatory platforms equipped with the latest automatic sensors and samplers to measure environmental parameters on mining and reference areas at representative spatial and temporal scales. To support quick actions for preventing serious harm to the environment, the system will implement high-capacity data handling pipelines able to collect, transmit, process and display monitoring data in near real time. Finally, we will provide technological and systemic solutions for forecasting potential environmental impacts of using the developed monitoring and mitigation methods.