EU funds Mediterranean forecasting systems development

The European Union has awarded the international Odyssea consortium €8.4 million ($9.4 million) to develop an interoperable and cost-effective platform that fully integrates networks of observation and forecasting systems across the Mediterranean basin.

Odyssea, comprised of 28 partner organizations from 14 EU and non-EU countries across the Mediterranean, includes research institutes, universities, policy makers, NGOs, and SMEs.

Its platform is a 4.5-year EU-funded project intended to make Mediterranean marine data easily accessible and operational to multiple maritime sector end-users. These include oil and gas extraction, wind farms, mariculture, ocean energy, undersea cables, ports and shipping, policy, and others.

Odyssea will develop a network of coastal observatories, deploying novel in-situ sensors at sea, employing oceanographic modeling, and integrating existing mobile apps for citizen and scientist networks. It will also apply advanced algorithms to organize, homogenize, and integrate large quantities of data.

The platform will provide, through a public portal, on-demand information services, including forecasts. The project will include capacity building to maximize exploitation of the information services for creating business and research opportunities across the Mediterranean Sea basin.

The project is led by the Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH) in Greece and funded by Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.

Georgios Sylaios from DUTH, Odyssea coordinator, said: “We have identified a real need to harmonize existing earth observing systems operating around the Mediterranean and upgrading their operational oceanographic capacities. The project will support EU policy implementation, thus improving interoperability in monitoring and fostering blue growth jobs creation.”

Odyssea’s opening conference will be held in Kavala, Greece, from June 6-8, 2017.