CIF Showcase 1: Summary

Published: January 31, 2025

On January 28, 2025, stakeholders joined the CIF team for a virtual, live demonstration of the CIF’s first working prototype tools. 

Nine months into the two-year project, stakeholders were given a tour of the new CIF Dashboard, now functional with sample data and several analysis algorithms. The team presented three use cases, outlined future capabilities, and gathered stakeholder feedback.

Use cases

Each use case demonstrated how CIF’s capabilities address real-world stakeholder needs:

  1. Sea Ice Assessment for Shipping 
    1. Supports route planning in compliance with the IMO Polar Code. 
    2. Applies data layers to enhance safety and efficiency in sea ice regions.
    3. Key data layers: Sentinel 1 SAR images, Sea ice human interpretation (ice charts), Sea ice AI interpretation, IMO POLARIS RIO calculation
  2. Site Statistics for Aquaculture 
    1. Provides metocean and biochemical data for site selection and policy development.
    2. Key Data Layers: Plankton, water quality (temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH), sea ice (concentration, movement).
  3. Site Harshness/Attractiveness for Offshore Wind Energy
    1. Supports early-stage offshore wind energy development in Atlantic Canada.
    2. Key Data Layers: Wave height, wind and ocean currents, tides, bathymetry, sea ice (concentration, stage of development, icebergs, freezing spray).

Future capabilities

Upcoming features include ice accretion prediction, satellite image warping for sea ice movement analysis, and route optimization for safer, more sustainable voyages. The CIF storytelling tool was also introduced, enabling interactive maps from the CIF Dashboard to be embedded in web-based scrollytelling formats.

Stakeholder feedback

Shipping: Stakeholders noted an interest in future projections of ice conditions, in a GPS feed tracking a live point on the map, and in POLARIS calculations based not on human-made ice charts but rather on those derived using AI. 

Aquaculture: Stakeholders confirmed the effectiveness of the use case for site selection and policy development. There was also interest in layering historical (10-year) salinity data over currents for circulation analyses. 

Off-shore renewable energy: Stakeholders were interested in adding geo-referenced data, in particular polygons representing potential off-shore wind areas, as well as adding solar radiation data layers. 

Storytelling tool: Stakeholders see the potential in the tool, including noting an example of telling a story about the positive impacts of shellfish farms on local water quality.   

Feedback from this event will inform the next development phase of the CIF Dashboard, ensuring it is driven by user needs.

Next steps

The project will now focus on refining and tailoring the platform based on stakeholder input. One-on-one meetings with interested “CIF anchor tenants” will take place throughout February.

The beta CIF Dashboard has been made available to all stakeholders at cif.eox.at.  

European Stakeholder Workshop Summary

Published: November 7, 2024

On October the 3rd and 4th, stakeholders from 12 countries, representing industry, not-for-profit, academia, intergovernmental and government organisations gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark, and virtually for a workshop to discuss their needs and inform the next steps in the development of the Cerulean Information Factory (CIF) decision-support tool.

Over three two-hour workshops – dedicated to the CIF’s three capability areas: Shipping, Aquaculture, and Off-shore renewable energy – participants related and discussed their information needs that could potentially be addressed by the CIF. CIF presented initial capabilities, based on the needs captured in the first CIF stakeholder workshop, and stakeholder feedback was requested.

Workshop summaries

The first of the three workshops covered the shipping capability. Participants reported information needs, including:

  1. Historical temperature, sea state, and other climate data in an easy-to-use format,
  2. Access to Ice charts using an API (application programming interface),
  3. Freely available AIS (automatic identification system) information to be aggregated through the year(s),
  4. Integration with other datasets,
  5. Near real time data, and
  6. High-res SAR (synthetic-aperture radar) data.

Four example use cases of the CIF cloud-based platform were presented: Assessment Information and Statistics, Sea Ice Charts and POLARIS Calculations, SAR Satellite Images and Interpretation, and Route Optimization in Sea Ice. These were all reported to be of interest by the participants, with discussion and comments mainly on the need for on-ship interpretation of information when in ice-infested waters.

“Making these types of capabilities more widely available will help us reach different segments of marine users, and the work is complementary with the base data that Ice Services are already providing and allow that data to be better/further exploited.” – Shipping workshop participant

The second workshop focused on the aquaculture capability, and three example capabilities were presented. For the first, Assessment Information and Statistics, stakeholders reported an interest in information related to a harshness/attractive index, algae blooms, turbidity, suspended sediment, chlorophyll a, and coastal ice conditions. The second, Harshness/Attractiveness Indices, is of interest for analysing primary productivity and attractiveness for specific species. The third, Metocean Conditions and Forecasts, is most relevant at seasonal, short-term (days) and current conditions timescales.

In the final workshop, covering Offshore renewable energy, participants reported these information needs:

  1. Access to unified publicly accessible met/ocean biogeochemical data in a tool covering historical data,
  2. An ecosystem-based planning tool, including data needed to measure the effects of renewable energy infrastructure, and
  3. Areas where cable landfall is legal.

Stakeholders were presented with three example capabilities: Assessment Information and Statistics, Harshness / Attractiveness Indices, and Metocean Conditions and Forecasts. Assessment information was most relevant related to sea ice, waves, wind and biogeochemical parameters in the water column and at the seabed. Indices were seen as being used to look at ice floes, lightning strike, waves, sea ice and wind. Metocean conditions and forecasting are most interesting in near-real-time and over climate time-scales, with sea ice, wind, waves and current as the key variables.

Next steps

CIF is working with the feedback from the two workshops hosted this year, as well as one-on-one conversations with stakeholders, to finalise an initial set of capabilities. A showcase is planned for December, 2024, to allow key stakeholders to use the platform and provide feedback.

Canadian Stakeholder Workshop Summary

Published: July 10, 2024

On May the 6th and 7th, stakeholders from industry, industry associations, not-for-profit organisations, the federal government, and provincial governments met virtually for a workshop to inform the creation of a new Green Transition Information Factory (GTIF), the Cerulean Information Factory (CIF). 

Covering the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean basins, using Earth Observation (EO) data to connect Canada and North Europe, the CIF will deliver user-focused capabilities to support decision-making in three areas:

  1. Shipping,
  2. Aquaculture, and
  3. Off-shore renewable energy.

The initial three workshops comprised Canadian stakeholders, with each workshop focusing on one of the areas mentioned above. 

Over each of the two-hour workshops, participants were asked to respond in writing and to discuss questions related to their organisation or sector’s current uses of EO data, and their information needs that could be filled using EO data. The attendees were also asked to identify any policies or other imperatives that are influencing their organisation’s information requirements. 

The first of the three workshops covered the shipping capability. During this workshop, stakeholders reported using EO data in areas such as sea ice navigation, for ground truthing of sea ice forecasts, water levels in flood conditions, greenhouse gas emissions in ports, detection of navigation hazards, and observing marine mammals. Much of the discussion and reported needs focused on ice charting and forecasting, marine spatial planning, and decreasing carbon intensity using ship and port emissions data. Policies and/or imperatives that could influence the shipping requirements mainly pertained to emissions and decarbonization regulations and maritime safety and environmental protection.

The second workshop focused on the aquaculture capability. Stakeholders reported using EO data for various applications, centering on environmental monitoring, such as site feasibility and spatial planning, model validation, ice, metocean data (including related to superchill conditions and heat waves), chlorophyll and pathogen risks, environmental assessments (including surface kelp extent), climate change adaptation, and coastal geomorphology. Their central information need is enhanced access to nearshore biophysical environmental data, as well as forecasts on short (days to weeks) and seasonal timescales. Regarding the policies and imperatives influencing the aquaculture information requirements, the stakeholders provided examples in such areas as climate action and monitoring and general aquaculture development and management.

The third and final workshop covered the off-shore renewable energy capability. Stakeholders reported using EO data for various applications, such as metocean conditions and trends; shipping lanes and traffic; site characterization; water levels; and sea ice presence, movement and conditions. Their central information need relates to marine spatial planning: an integrated view of metocean and bathymetry information, in addition to other geographic ocean uses. In addition, stakeholders identified a need for metocean information, including geographic characterization of metocean conditions, as well as short-term and climate-scale forecasts. Finally the stakeholders identified policies that could influence the off-shore renewable energy capability in such areas as coastal and environmental hazards and off-shore wind development.

Stakeholders reported their interest in engaging further with the CIF project to fill their information needs, providing further suggestions and reviewing progress as the CIF evolves. Based on the information needs and gaps, the CIF capabilities for shipping, aquaculture and off-shore renewable energy have the potential to support the project’s Canadian stakeholders.

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