From 22 to 24 March 2022, the second edition of the EOOS Technology Forum took place as a virtual workshop, organised by EuroGOOS, with the support and collaboration of EuroSea and Minke EU Horizon 2020 projects, and endorsed as an UN Ocean Decade activity.
The workshop brought together 124 participants representing instrument manufacturers, technicians, technologists, and scientists across the public and private sectors from several continents. Participants discussed what technologies will be needed to achieve two goals of the UN Decade for Ocean Science and Sustainable Development 2021-2030: “A clean ocean where sources of pollution are identified and removed” and “A healthy and resilient ocean where marine ecosystems are mapped and protected”.
In this three-day workshop, which included high-level presentations, panel discussions and Show and Tell sessions, different topics were analyzed and discussed. The role of state of the art and foreseeable technology to achieve Ocean Decade goals session included talks about Marine Life 2030 programme, Ocean Biomolecular Observing Networks, marine litter monitory and Digital Twin of the Ocean. It was followed by a session on the role of technology providers. The current technological landscape was discussed, as well as the ways on how to achieve a distributed embedded, multi-parameter ocean network and how to establish a systematic and robust data value chain. The integration of multiple platforms and the potential of new platforms was an important topic of discussion. Beyond observing technology, the role of cyberinfrastructure and applications of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) was highlighted.
Finally, the EOOS Tech Forum compiled the actions that Europe and EOOS can take in this Decade in order to help to improve the connections and interactions between research, applications and technological development.
For more information about future EOOS-related events, please visit EOOS website.
