Project 1 Advanced technological platforms for sea monitoring and forecasting
The current marine observing systems produce a huge amount of data and services relevant for the scientific community and more in general for the whole human society (e.g. food production, tourism, climate change mitigation, carbon dioxide absorption and oxygen production). Nevertheless, a step towards a more effective system of marine observations can be made by defining and developing a new paradigm based on the transition from singlepoint to diffuse monitoring. This can be achieved by defining and developing a new generation of marine observing systems that integrate the traditional wired single-point monitoring stations with new stand-alone and distributed observing points, innovative sensors capable of acquiring new environmental parameters, autonomous vehicles capable of adaptively extending the monitored areas.
This project proposes the development of a new integrated system that combines single-point and diffused monitoring through the development of hardware and software modules that integrate traditional in-situ measurements with adaptive monitoring managed by AI solutions. This integrated system will enable more efficient data collection even in extreme conditions, reduce energy costs, improve the forecasting system and allow the realization of innovative early warning approaches and effective decision support systems. The project combines AIbased technologies and models (RL2) with new robotic systems “ecorobots” and sensors (RL1) with “traditional” systems for coastal and offshore environmental and marine characterization and recovery. In fragile and significant areas like the marine protected areas or aquaculture farming, such integrated technological solutions represent innovative tools and solutions aimed to improve the knowledge on natural marine ecosystems and to protect them. The project expected results consist of ten stand-alone products and two integrated products.
The stand-alone products consist of two systems for the autonomous and adaptive acquisition of physical and biochemical parameters (product 1.1) and passive acoustics (product 1.2); one fluorescence-based sensor for the detection of organic compounds in seawater (product 1.3); one octopus-inspired soft robotic arm suitable to be installed onboard autonomous vehicles (product 1.4); two early-warning systems for gelatinous zooplanlkton (product 1.5) and for nectonic fluxes (product 1.6); two software analysis applications for the monitoring of coastal water based on satellite image analysis (Product 1.7) and for the field data sampling based on adaptive strategies (Product 1.8); one label-free polymer photonic sensors (Products 1.9) and a system for sea waves and rainfall monitoring (Products 1.10). The two integrated products consist of a surface autonomous vehicle (Product 1.11) equipped with the soft robotic arm described in the product 1.5 and a distributed observing system (Product 1.12) including the autonomous and adaptive system described in the product 1.1, the sensor described in the product 1.6, and the software analysis applications described in the products 1.7 and 1.8. All the data acquired by the stand-alone and integrated products will be managed by the infrastructures developed within the RL4 activities, with the aim of making them available to stakeholders via metadata and interoperability techniques.
