Periodic Reporting for period 2 - NextOcean (Next Generation of Fishing and Aquaculture Services)
Reporting period: 2022-05-01 to 2023-07-31
NextOcean aims at developing (co-designing) 6 commercially-oriented, operational Earth Observation-based services for the public and private sectors in sustainable fisheries and aquaculture under a common service delivery platform leveraging on Copernicus and GEOSS data and resources, complemented by other EO and in-situ data streams. It envisages to deliver economic, social and policy value to European citizens by developing a new market of product and services, targeting 1) fisheries authorities wishing to have an improved control over marine resources; 2) responsible fishing companies willing to certify their compliance to sustainability by ecolabeling fish provenance; 3) the fast growing aquaculture industry, for assessing their risks and potential revenues; and 4) aquaculture regulators in understanding the impact of fish farms, in order to decide based on bespoke scientific solutions.
It builds on past activities, proposing an integrated solution and the services will address 4 User Scenarios: Monitoring Fishing Activities and Impact; Minimisation of Bycatch and Ecolabeling; Monitoring Aquaculture Impacts; and New Fish Farms. The involvement of potential clients is done progressively, with an initial group of Alpha Users already engaged, supporting co-design of solutions. The buyers group is then enlarged to a wider group of Beta testers and potential clients, who will define further developments, and the path to integration into their decision-making processes. NextOcean will define clear KPIs and success criteria for the services, including on the integration in the value chain. Dedicated workshops and training sessions will be held with the larger community, where the services will be advertised, explained and assessed in light of the interests and knowledge of the communities.
It builds on past activities, proposing an integrated solution and the services will address 4 User Scenarios: Monitoring Fishing Activities and Impact; Minimisation of Bycatch and Ecolabeling; Monitoring Aquaculture Impacts; and New Fish Farms. The involvement of potential clients is done progressively, with an initial group of Alpha Users already engaged, supporting co-design of solutions. The buyers group is then enlarged to a wider group of Beta testers and potential clients, who will define further developments, and the path to integration into their decision-making processes. NextOcean will define clear KPIs and success criteria for the services, including on the integration in the value chain. Dedicated workshops and training sessions will be held with the larger community, where the services will be advertised, explained and assessed in light of the interests and knowledge of the communities.
NextOcean has three major objectives. The work performed is reported below with respect to each of the objectives.
SO-1 Specific Objective 1: Co-design commercial services leveraging on Copernicus, additional data sources, related previous activities and expertise with and for users active in the sustainable fishing and aquaculture sectors.
Co-design has been a key element of this reporting period, planning and implementing a co-design workshop to gather initial requirements for novel or improved services to be developed during NextOcean, to ensure these are relevant and desirable for potential customers in the fishing and aquaculture sectors. Copernicus datasets are being integrated towards the potential added value of our commercial services.
The establishment of a set of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) descriptions, for each service, was supportive of the co-design activities (services and data products descriptions), along with the initial demo of the services availability on the Online Store (services features).
SO-2 Specific Objective 2: Promote the uptake of the services at international scale, across vertical markets (private and public) and amongst key user communities with tailored and well-targeted communication, dissemination and capacity building activities.
The commercial planning efforts have so far built a good understanding of NextOcean’s target markets, both in terms of the type of entity (public and private organisations) and the geographic focus (specific countries all over the world), Work has begun to identify specific potential customers that fit these profiles, who will then be approached for involvement in the project as beta users, which will start to produce results under KPI 3.2.. Regarding EI-3, the market opportunities have been identified, where NextOcean can be an innovative leader of EO services in fishery and aquaculture, offering a unique proposition and clear added value.
A range of communications products have been produced to promote the project and engage with our target audience. There has been a good level of interactions with social media and the project has been showcased at several conferences and events. Capacity building has primarily been through the webinar series, which has provided a useful platform to engage with new potential users.
SO-3 Specific Objective 3: Enable long-term commercial sustainability of the services and their penetration in public and private markets with an actionable business plan.
A detailed market assessment has been carried out to define the target markets and understand the needs of the fishing and aquaculture industries. In-depth competitor analysis has outlined how NextOcean services should position themselves to best compete and attract interest from potential customers, which contributes towards the market share objective of EI-4. A business plan has been created, with input from all consortium members, which is designed to deliver long-term commercial sustainability. Target markets have been prioritised, a value proposition has been defined, pricing of services has been developed and revenue distribution scenarios have been evaluated, It is too early to assess KPIs, since the sales efforts are yet to begin.
SO-1 Specific Objective 1: Co-design commercial services leveraging on Copernicus, additional data sources, related previous activities and expertise with and for users active in the sustainable fishing and aquaculture sectors.
Co-design has been a key element of this reporting period, planning and implementing a co-design workshop to gather initial requirements for novel or improved services to be developed during NextOcean, to ensure these are relevant and desirable for potential customers in the fishing and aquaculture sectors. Copernicus datasets are being integrated towards the potential added value of our commercial services.
The establishment of a set of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) descriptions, for each service, was supportive of the co-design activities (services and data products descriptions), along with the initial demo of the services availability on the Online Store (services features).
SO-2 Specific Objective 2: Promote the uptake of the services at international scale, across vertical markets (private and public) and amongst key user communities with tailored and well-targeted communication, dissemination and capacity building activities.
The commercial planning efforts have so far built a good understanding of NextOcean’s target markets, both in terms of the type of entity (public and private organisations) and the geographic focus (specific countries all over the world), Work has begun to identify specific potential customers that fit these profiles, who will then be approached for involvement in the project as beta users, which will start to produce results under KPI 3.2.. Regarding EI-3, the market opportunities have been identified, where NextOcean can be an innovative leader of EO services in fishery and aquaculture, offering a unique proposition and clear added value.
A range of communications products have been produced to promote the project and engage with our target audience. There has been a good level of interactions with social media and the project has been showcased at several conferences and events. Capacity building has primarily been through the webinar series, which has provided a useful platform to engage with new potential users.
SO-3 Specific Objective 3: Enable long-term commercial sustainability of the services and their penetration in public and private markets with an actionable business plan.
A detailed market assessment has been carried out to define the target markets and understand the needs of the fishing and aquaculture industries. In-depth competitor analysis has outlined how NextOcean services should position themselves to best compete and attract interest from potential customers, which contributes towards the market share objective of EI-4. A business plan has been created, with input from all consortium members, which is designed to deliver long-term commercial sustainability. Target markets have been prioritised, a value proposition has been defined, pricing of services has been developed and revenue distribution scenarios have been evaluated, It is too early to assess KPIs, since the sales efforts are yet to begin.
NextOcean will impact the policy priorities of the Europe 2020 strategy by contributing to the objective of the societal challenge ‘Climate Action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials’. In the DoA, four Expected Impact are identified and it is applicable the explanation on how the NextOcean project will contribute to them. The project has defined a set of KPIs to monitor the impacts on a regular basis. During the setup phase of the project, the KPI definition and targets have been reviewed in order to precise a definition that allows a clear measurement of each KPI. The updated KPI definitions are part of the request for amendment and are reported in this section. At the current stage of the project, most of them cannot be assessed yet.