Seminar – ODF Sweden

ODF Block Chain and Science – Workshop Script

Yixin Zhang — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 09:51:51 +0000

New ways of organising? An exploration into how decentralized autonomous organizations can help Ocean Sustainability Science

Ocean Data Factory Sweden webinar, 25 May, 2022, 1 pm – 2.30 pm

Linwood Pendleton, Ocean Knowledge Action Network and Moonjelly Academy
Anna-Marie Swan, Block Chain for Good Alliance

The script of the workshop is prepared by Linwood Pendleton and Anna-Marie Swan.

Introduction 0:00-30:00

LINWOOD

Hi, Thanks for joining us today.

First, I want to let you know that we are recording this webinar because we want to write up what we learn today. So, please turn-off your camera if you don’t want to be seen and if you do not want to be part of this recorded webinar, please log-off now. We will not share this recording.

Second, I want to thank the Ocean Data Factory for inviting us today to try out this interactive session.

What we want to do in this next 90 mins is for all of us to explore together how blockchain technology might offer us new ways to coordinate and cooperate. We’ll be touching on the ways that blockchain changes how we store and share data, and how it’s given birth to new organisational processes, including a new type of organisation called a DAO. Then we’ll be diving into smaller groups to think about whether this new technology might elevate how we work together as scientists. Already, DAOs are being used to fund medical research and at least one marine science Ph.D. has been funded through the Seastarter DAO.

GOALS and Rules of Conduct

The goal of this interactive session today is to try to come up with a better understanding of the pros and cons of decentralized autonomous organizations for science. There will be a lot of opportunity for you to weigh in on this and we will collect your thoughts and ideas and write this up as a “light paper” that we will share broadly. There will be no direct attribution for specific comments, but we would be happy to include you by name in our write-up if you are interested. If you would like to be directly acknowledged, we’ll gather your emails at the end of the session.

We want to start by acknowledging that some of the aspects of blockchain are emotional and complex. We don’t really have time to cover all aspects of blockchain, crypto and the like and today we really want to focus on a couple of very specific applications of blockchain technology to governing scientific resources and decisions.

That doesn’t mean we think these other topics are unimportant and we know many of you might have something you want to say regarding concerns about crypto currencies or the potential energy use of blockchain. So, we have created a space within the Mural Board, called the Parking Lot, for you to jot down your general concerns. We hope to have future sessions dedicated to these other topics. Anna-Marie will share the link to the board in the Zoom chat now and we’ll give you a couple of minutes to log in and have a quick look around.

In this session, we hope to make some progress towards better understanding the pros and cons of blockchain for science finance, governing databases, and some other very specific applications of blockchain. We are here to stimulate a conversation. We have people with a variety of levels and kinds of experiences with science, block chain and DAOs. So, by breaking up into smaller groups, we hope you can support each other to learn and dive deep into these topics.

We ask everyone to approach the sessions with curiosity and courtesy – it’s my hope that we leave today with many new questions and ideas.

Anyone that acts rudely or tries to distract from an open and scholarly discussion will be removed from the webinar – but hopefully that won’t happen. Anna-Marie …

ANNA-MARIE
First, we want to introduce ourselves and then we’ll send you into breakout rooms in pairs so you can have a check-in and meet each other. A check-in is something we often do in DAO meetings so that we can build intimacy.

LP introduces himself

Ocean KAN International Project Office, hosted by CNRS and supported by Consortium
Moonjelly Academy
Ocean KAN was created to explore new ways of bringing people and networks together to support the co-design of ocean science for sustainable development
We created Moonjelly Academy with Moonjelly.io to do what we are doing today – think critically about new digital approaches to conservation and science and to share that thinking with the world.

AM introduces herself.

BlockchainForGood Alliance
etc.

Now, in that spirit of openness, let’s introduce you to each other.

We’ll send you into breakout rooms in pairs and you’ll have 5 minutes to meet each other. The invitation for this check-in round is to see if you can find something in common in that time.

***** (5 mins breakout)

LINWOOD

Welcome back. We hope you enjoyed your check-in. (Go here for introductory materials about blockchain and web3.)
Let me just step back and remind you what we are talking about today. For quite some time many of us have been talking about, and I’ve been writing about, ways that we could use blockchain technology to give researchers ownership to data and intellectual property.

The blockchain tech I’m talking about is simply a bit of encrypted computer code that records transactions. What makes blockchain so special is that these transactions are recorded not just on one computer, but many computers, worldwide, at the same time. That means these blockchain records are nearly impossible to change unilaterally and they can be open for all to see.

Often, the blockchain record is associated with something called a token which is a digital representation of what the blockchain applies to. These tokens can act like currencies, they can be deeds of ownership – like NFTs, and they can be used to convey voting rights in different types of decision processes. It is this latter use that we want to focus on today.

Blockchain approaches are now being used to automate decision-making and governance for commonly managed resources. Consensys estimates that nearly 1 million people belong to communities that use blockchain-enabled governance.

Today we want to explore what that might look like for scientific resources. Specifically, we want to get some initial impressions about two potential applications to science:

what this could look like as a way of managing and distributing science funds, and
how might DISTRIBUTED AUTONOMOUS ORGANIZATIONS OR DAOS be used to govern shared databases.

The idea here is to just get us all thinking about the potential benefits and risks of using these new technologies for science.

To start, we want to get a little more background about these decentralized autonomous organizations. We are going to hear from Anna-Marie who has been working in web3 and DAOs for over a year now. Anna-Marie, …

ANNA-MARIE

I’m really pleased to be here today so I can share with you some of the reasons why I believe that blockchain technology enables funding to be more transparent and community-led and -owned. I’ll do this by utilising Giveth, a DAO that’s innovating philanthropic giving, as a case study.

To start with, you might be wondering what a DAO is. Let’s break it down.

A DAO is a decentralised autonomous organisation that utilises blockchain technology to ensure that when certain decisions are made by the community, the decision is enacted onchain (i.e. on the blockchain). This is due to an incredible piece of innovation called a Smart Contract. Smart Contracts are programs stored on a blockchain that run when predetermined conditions are met. This is the autonomy part of the term DAO and it’s why blockchain technology, and DAOs, are sometimes called trustless, since the program actions will take place automatically.

The decentralised part of the term DAO refers to the fact that though in reality DAOs usually operate somewhere on the line between centralised and decentralised, with some decisions being made by a central team and some decisions being made by community members, most DAOs intend to end up at a place where the community has full ownership of financial and governance decision-making. To accomplish this distribution of decision-making, a DAO will usually create a token. This token is then usually given to community members and sold on the crypto markets. This token can then be used to ‘vote’ by the token holders for proposals about governance and DAO treasury decisions.

I keep using the terms ‘usually’ and ‘most’ when discussing DAOs because I’m simplifying quite complex systems and there’s really no one way to ‘DAO’ it. There’s a whole field of social engineering about token economics and DAOs dedicated to exploring and experimenting with tokenomics. Many of these explorations include how governance power can be shared in a way that doesn’t recreate current systems, such as giving those with the most money the greatest voting power.

Let’s bring all of this into the context of Giveth and some of the ways that DAOs and blockchain technology is innovating philanthropy.

Giveth is a philanthropy platform that enables crypto donations to go directly to the registered projects. From large nonprofits right through to a single person collecting trash from their local countryside, a project like Giveth enables social and environmental impact funding to occur directly between the donor and the receiver.

100% of donations go directly into the project’s wallet. Giveth doesn’t take any fees and there are no middlemen. A person in South Africa that cares about climate health can directly fund someone in Italy that’s helping regenerate their land.

It’s also very simple to become a donor or to become a verified project.

To become a verified project, all you need is a crypto wallet and an understanding of what to do with the crypto you receive. To become a donor, you simply connect your crypto wallet and send the funds. The only fees are those that the blockchain itself might charge you.

If we click into one of Giveth’s verified projects, we can not only read all about the projects’ work and see updates, but if we then click here next to the donation amount we can view every single donation to that project. What we’re looking at here are the actual transactions on the blockchain. We can see the amount that was donated, which wallet address it came from, and when it was sent. And we know that it’s correct information because we can see the thousands of times this transaction was verified by nodes all around the world.

This multiple, decentralised verification is one of the key reasons that blockchain technology is so exciting! Instead of looking to central institutions like banks or governments to oversee transactions, by having thousands of nodes all around the globe checking the same information, we can take full control of our information.

There’s much more that we can learn from looking at these transaction records, but these three aspects alone gives anyone with the knowledge about how to find this information a completely new level of transparency and traceability that we often don’t have today.

It’s not only the project information that is transparent. Giveth’s wallets are also on chain, which means we can see every financial transaction that occurs for Giveth.

Imagine if every donation that was given to your project was transparent and traceable data that was visible to anyone that wanted to look at it. And imagine if every financial transaction that your project made was also transparent and traceable to anyone that wanted to look at it. And imagine if every financial transaction went straight from your donors directly to your wallet, without any intermediaries. Wouldn’t that be impactful?

So there you have it! This is just a very quick intro into some of the ways that DAOs and web3-based projects are utilising blockchain technology and decentralisation to change how philanthropy works and are exploring ways to make it more community-led and -owned. The question we’re going to explore for the rest of the session today is: Could this work for science funding too?

LINWOOD

Thanks Anna-Marie. I know that was a pretty intense summary of the world of decentralized funding through DAOs. So, let’s take some time to break out to see if people have general questions about how these DAOs work. We are going to split into two groups and Anna-Marie and I will each join one of the groups so that we can try to answer your questions. After about 15 minutes of discussion, we will come back together and then have a short exercise. After that, I will explain how we are going to work together to think about how these DAOs might work for science funding and databases.

Okay, Anna-Marie will launch the breakout groups.

30:00 – 45:00 Breakouts Q&A with Facilitators

LINWOOD

Thanks for participating in those breakouts.

…

So, now that you have thought through some of the basics about DAOs, let’s think a little more deeply about specific uses for DAOs in science and especially whether this use of decentralized governance could be applied in science.

Based on Anna-Marie’s presentation, I hope you already see how we might use DAO approaches to propose and fund scientific research.

Another potential application to think about is whether DAOs could be used to govern shared databases of things like ocean data or earth observation data.

To get started, I want to do a little poll to see how many of you have contributed data to one of the following databases.

Yixin, could you launch the first poll?

LP POLL: Have you contributed data to:

Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS)
IODE (International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange
ESRI’s Living Atlas of the World
GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility)
EMODNET (European Marine Observation and Data Network)

Okay. And if you have contributed to one of the databases above, please answer this second poll – Yixin? …

LP Poll: How much SAY do you have in how these databases are managed?

None at all
A little, but not enough
A lot, I feel full represented
I don’t really feel like I need to have a say

Of course, some of these databases are governed by country-level representatives. GBIF has representatives from countries that contribute financially to support the database.

The question we want you to consider is whether individual data providers should have a say in governance?

A DAO could potentially be used to govern similar databases or at least new databases. Governance tokens could be earned based on any previously agreed upon criteria – how much data are uploaded, how frequently data are downloaded, financial contribution, time spent verifying data, or based on diversity, equity, inclusion and justice criteria, etc.

Could this work? Could more direct say in governance create incentives to share data?

To think about how DAOs might be used for science funding, governing databases, and other uses, we are going to break out into a handful of small groups to talk more about DAOs and science.

45:00-65:00

BREAKOUT GROUPS – self organized:
In your breakouts, we will send you to a Mural Board where you will see each of the topics we just discussed. Each breakout group will have a row where you can put your group’s top 4 promises and concerns for each topic.

DAOs and Science Funding:
DAOS and Database Governance
DAOS and other types of science governance (you choose by writing your topic in the first sticky note for your group)

You will have 20 minutes.

Please nominate ONE person to keep time and ONE person who can be prepared to summarize (in 2 minutes) the highlights of what your group discussed. PLEASE NOTE THE NUMBER OF YOUR BREAKOUT GROUP – you will want to use the column that matches your breakout group # and later I also will ask you to report out by break out group.

We suggest that you jot down ideas either in the CHAT or you could have someone open a Google doc. Do this for about 10 minutes and then spend the second 10 minutes picking the 4 top or most agreed upon promises and concerns for your group and discussing what you’ve written. Then we will come back to discuss.

Okay, let’s go.

65:00-75:00 Short summary 2 minute summary by each breakout group (AM to organise the threads)

Okay, let’s go around and hear what you have to say.

We will start with Break Out Group #1, 2, and #3.

75:00-85:00 Open Discussion and Summary

RESULTS:

Trust, transparency, democratization, flexibility, and the potential to reduce bias and increase equity were common themes in the breakouts. Potential risks that were identified including security and energy costs. At least one participant noted the risks that DAOs will not work well for science funding if voting participation rates are not high or representative. The findings from the breakout sessions are summarized below.

Findings from the Breakout Groups: Potential and Risks for DAOs and Ocean Science
	DAOs for Science Funding	DAOS for Database Governance	Common Threads
Potential Benefits	Crowdfunding, new sources of revenue Trust (general and public trust) in how decisions are made Decreased biases in funding Democratize funding Community building Extends range of funding	Transparency (where data are used and for what) Increased funding and flexibility for independent (non-institutional scientists) Scalability (if we want every scientist to share data, centralized databases are not prepared and cannot adjust governance fast enough) Commercialization feedback (create a way for channeling payments or royalties back to data creators, through the DAO) Potential to catalyze and inform innovation and emergent tech Enables Collaboration	Collaboration, community building, trust and transparency.
Risks	Energy consumption Uninformed Decision makers Who decides/votes?	Energy consumption Data privacy/security Could grow and become as ineffective as large, centralized databases Data accessibility Where does data reside?

85:00-90:00 Quick wrap-up (LP):

Thanks so much for your time and input today. We will leave the Mural Board open until close of business on Monday to give you some time to go back and add more comments. Then, Anna-Marie and I will write up a summary of our findings that we will share via Linkedin and Medium. If you want to be notified by email, please make sure you put your email in the chat. Also, if you want to be acknowledged in the write-up, please let us know in the chat also.

Now, to finish, we would like each of you to think of one sentence to reflect on what we did today. Put this in the chat, but don’t hit enter until I say.

Okay, 1 minute to get your thoughts together.

Now ENTER!

We will leave that up for a minute and then close the webinar.

Thanks everyone!

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ODF Sweden Webinar Series – Using AI to accelerate wildlife conservation

Yiqi Lin — Sun, 10 Apr 2022 13:03:56 +0000

On Feb. 1, 2022, Dr. Victor Anton, founder of the New Zealand-based nonprofit organisation Wildlife.ai, gave a presentation on how the not-for-profit uses data science for wildlife conservation and environmental education, with a special focus on the marine environment.

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionising multiple aspects of our lives, there is limited uptake of AI in supporting ecological well-being and protecting the nearly 1 million species currently threatened with extinction. In Dr. Anton’s experience, this can be attributed to three main reasons: AI usually fails to make the priority list in the community-led bottom-up projects; the overall limited knowledge of what AI is and what it can do; and the lack of resources to to use this technology. Wildlife.ai was born out of the need to bridge this gap between computer sciences and wildlife conservation worldwide, and aims to achieve six of the Sustainable Development Goals where community-based projects provide opportunities for people to understand artificial intelligence, and where innovative uses of AI facilitate a better understanding of the impacts of climate change and below and above water.

Watch the webinar at our YouTube Channel.

You can get involved and support their work by contributing ideas, identifying species, donating or becoming a “ranger” at https://www.wildlife.ai/

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ODF Sweden Webinar Series – Swedish Biodiversity Data Infrastructure

Yiqi Lin — Sat, 02 Apr 2022 17:09:54 +0000

Technological advancements in the past 20 years have increased the access range of biological sampling to almost any corner of the oceans. The increase in both data influx and need necessitates an extensive, coordinated, and standardized global infrastructure of biological observations.

Marine research, compared to terrestrial research, faces more challenges in terms of data collection. Marine researchers as a result, have largely focused on understanding the phenomenon rather than processes. Having a data-sharing platform will enable individual projects to share raw data so that their research efforts and findings are accessible and reusable for other researchers.

In the webinar on March 2, 2022, Dr. Matthias Obst, Researcher at Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Gothenburg gave an overview of the Swedish Biodiversity Data Infrastructure (SBDI). Despite taking shape only in 2021, it is the result of a decades-long process of developing, merging and consolidating Swedish e-infrastructure for biodiversity and ecosystems research. It is a major achievement in creating a powerful national platform for innovative, interdisciplinary research on biodiversity and ecosystems. The national and international data infrastructure will now work together to allow scalable and interdisciplinary research on marine biodiversity and ecosystems in Sweden.

Watch the webinar at our YouTube Channel.

Visit, publish or harvest data at: https://biodiversitydata.se/

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ODF Sweden Webinar Series – Peladrone

Yiqi Lin — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 14:26:41 +0000

- PELADRONE: Digitally transforming Portuguese SME fisheries and coastal communities

A healthy ocean is essential for supporting life on the planet, regulating climates and sustaining multimillion-dollar industries. In Portugal, the fishing industry has long defined the livelihoods and economies of coastal communities, with approximately 90% of the industry comprised of small to medium-sized (SME) fisheries. However, SME fisheries are threatened by large scale fisheries with their increased investment in automation and new digital technologies, as well as battling with a reduction in fish biomass largely caused by ocean litter. The declining fish stock and increasing search time, cost and distance have led to a mass migration of younger generations to search better job opportunities in larger cities.

Against such a backdrop, the PELADRONE project aims to tackle three main challenges:

Decreasing competitiveness and sustainability of Portuguese SME fisheries
Increasingly threatened Portuguese marine ecosystems
Future livelihood of Portuguese coastal communities at great risk

With this in mind and the EEA and Norway Grants, the PELADRONE project is developing an AI-enabled, drone-based reconnaissance service solution in Portugal where AI and drone technology will be used to map fish stocks in coastal waters to allow fishermen to more competitively and sustainably locate, track, and catch pelagic fish but will also allow for more effective resource management and conservation.

Project Manager Mafalda de Freitas talked about the development and future of the project in a webinar on December 1, 2021.

More information can be found at peladrone.pt, YouTube, and penicheoceanwatch.com.

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GUIDE-days “Göteborgs universitet: Industrial Dating Event”

Yiqi Lin — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 16:46:03 +0000

Three members of the ODF community, Matthias Obst, Thomas Mennerdahl and Torsten Linders will be attending the GUIDE-days “Göteborgs universitet: Industrial Dating Event”, which will be held at Lindholmen Conference Centre, Gothenburg on 13-14 October 2021.

GUIDE-days is an event offering opportunities for representatives of the industry to meet up with strong research groups from the university with the objective of establishing specific collaborations. The theme this year is “Image processing with artificial intelligence (AI)”.

The tentative program includes three thematic sessions:

Session A: Machine learning in subsea image analysis (Matthias will be leading the discussion. )
Session B: Computer vision in the automotive industry
Session C: Image analysis in life science applications

This event is free of charge! If you and your enterprise would like to join our GUIDE-days on 13-14 October 2021 or have a particular problem in the field of “Image processing with artificial intelligence (AI)” that you would like to discuss, please REGISTER HERE! (Read more from GU web.)

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ODF Sweden Webinar Series – Survey of Oysters

Yiqi Lin — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 09:23:27 +0000

- Survey of Oysters along the Swedish West Coast Using Towed Video

The European flat oyster Ostrea edulis beds are ecologically and economically important ecosystems, but are also one of the most endangered benthic habitats. The drastic population decline in Europe is largely due to overexploitation, pathogens, pollution, habitat destruction and competition from invasive species such as the Pacific oyster Magallana gigas. O. edulis beds are listed as one of the priority habitats in EU Habitats Directive. In Sweden, the knowledge of their prevalence and abundance is limited, and the environmental preferences and quality of the species are poorly documented.

European flat oyster Ostrea edulis (left) and Pacific oyster Magallana gigas (right). (Photo Credit: Andrea Cabrera)

Andrea Cabrera, from IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute and her team use a cost-effective and low-impact method to monitor the oysters in 435 different sites. They mounted a camera on a sled and dragged along the bottom along predetermined transects in the Koster archipelago in the Swedish west coast. This non-destructive method is an ideal way to monitor sensitive environments and generates permanent data-rich records that can be used to explore various research and management-related questions.

In the webinar Andrea talked about the challenges they face in this work, such as in distinguishing between live and dead oysters. Dense vegetation cover, turbid water, and the abundance of other marine species also increase the difficulty in identifying oysters. She also discussed the potential for automated image analysis, but acknowledged the underlying difficulties in underwater image processing and the need for appropriately annotated large-scale datasets.

Equipment used in obtaining underwater videos. (Photo Credit: Andrea Cabrera)

This webinar marks the end of our ODF webinar 2021 spring series. We look forward to being back with more interesting talks after the summer!

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ODF Sweden Webinar Series – Reveal the Secrets of Seabirds

Yiqi Lin — Sun, 25 Apr 2021 10:29:00 +0000

Using AI and Citizen Science to Reveal the Secrets of Seabirds

Seabirds are top predators in ocean ecosystems. They link the land and the ocean and act as indicators of ocean environmental change. By studying seabirds, researchers can learn a lot about the ocean ecosystems and its overall health. Jonas Hentati Sundberg, Associate Senior Lecturer at the Department of Aquatic Resources, SLU – Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Lysekil, Sweden, from SLU, led the construction of the Stora Karlsö Auk Lab in Stora Karlsö, a small island in the Baltic Sea about six kilometers west of the island of Gotland. The island is known for its huge colony of common murres (Uria aalge), or common guillemots. Jonas has been studying seabirds for more than 20 years. A few years back, he and his colleagues realised the limit of traditional techniques for biological or ecological studies, and the idea of building a giant nest box arose.

(Credit: Baltic Seabird Project)

The Auk Lab is a steel construction jutting out from Stora Karlsö’s cliff edge about 50 meters above sea level – the world’s largest nest box with space for 600 pairs of breeding seabirds in the middle of the common murre colony. It’s constructed in two parts: the inner part is the researchers’ hut, where equipment is mounted; the outer part mimics limestone cliffs, common murres’ natural habitat. Researchers can either be there physically to observe common murres from a close range, or sit remotely in their office looking at real-time videos captured by CCTV cameras connected over 4G.

In collaboration with WWF, a citizen science project was launched. A live stream was linked to WWF’s website during the early summer of 2019 and the public could watch live stream of common murres in their breeding season. A simple user interface was built to guide the reporting of behaviours such as copulations, fights and socialising or other unusual signs of distress. This attracted around 15,000 viewers within four weeks in 2019 and more than 2000 observations were submitted.

The massive amount of data generated during the 2000 hours of streaming made it impossible for researchers to study in a traditional sense. A two-day hackathon was held at AI Innovation of Sweden in Gothenburg at the end of 2019. The winner of the hackathon, Team SkyRoads, developed a strong algorithm to detect, identify and analyse the seabird data, which helped the researchers immensely. To ensure the success of any hackathon, says Jonas, it is important to have clearly defined tasks and create an environment that is inclusive; but for him, a hackathon is not a competition, rather a joint learning activity where people with different backgrounds and knowledge come together.

(Credit: Jonas Hentati Sundberg)

For researchers like Jonas, making use of AI and citizen science revolutionises seabird monitoring and ways to understand and answer questions about the ocean, and he believes opportunities will expand dramatically. They are also working in parallel on a marine drone project to monitor fish stocks as well as other oceanographic parameters. He admits that AI in research is a long-term and labour-intensive investment – a lot of time and effort are required for annotation, model development, testing and validation before one can start to reap the benefits. Citizen science is a possible way to help validate and annotate, but he stresses that citizen scientists are by no means cheap labour – researchers need to make it a reciprocal process, both fun and meaningful so it is a learning experience for the citizen scientists as well.

For more information on the Baltic Sea Project, see: http://www.balticseabird.com

On June 15, 2021, common murre will go live again on WWF website: https://www.wwf.se/english/baltic-guillemots-live-stream/.

ODF Sweden’s Spring 2021 Webinar Series continues on April 30, “Law as facilitator (or obstacle) for science-based marine governance”.

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ODF Sweden Webinar Series – Governmental Strategies

Yiqi Lin — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 20:27:58 +0000

– Governmental Strategies for a Sustainable Development

On March 16th, ODF Sweden hosted the 2021 March Webinar series with speakers Jessica Hjerpe Olausson (maritime expert from Region Västra Götaland) and Magnus Engelbrektsson (executive secretary of the CPMR North Sea Commission). Both speakers discussed development strategies from a governmental perspective, with a regional and international focus respectively.

Jessica introduced Region Västra Götaland’s strategies for competitive growth and sustainable development for 2030. Region Västra Götaland’s focus on the maritime is highly unique, as they are the only region in Sweden that has regional strategies for future innovation and long-term growth within the maritime sector. This is partly due to Västra Götaland’s interest in the fishing industry which makes up a large share of Sweden’s fishing industry and its geographical location that has been crucial for transportation and communication.

The strategies have been developed together with stakeholders in Västra Götaland and consist of four areas that they believe are of great interest for the future.

Innovation – become a forerunner and strive for a competitive industry
Building competence – supply skills for a long-run learning
An inclusive society – for trust and unity
Connecting the Västra Götaland region

(Credit: Jessica Hjerpe Olausson)

They have identified 5 areas of particular importance for economy and employment, which they believe would strengthen their innovation capacity and lead to a society in transition:

A circular and sustainable industry
Food, biobased material, and renewable energy
Mobility of the future
Health and life science
Tourism and creative enterprises

For successful strategy implementation, Jessica stated that it requires a joint effort from different sectors of the society. However, they try to keep an umbrella perspective rather than identifying the specific sectors. These five areas will continue to be the foci of the region’s innovation effort for the coming years.

For more information on Västra Götaland’s development strategies, see: https://www.vgregion.se/regional-utveckling/regional-utvecklingsstrategi-for-vastra-gotaland-2021-2030/

And for more information on the maritime sector in Västra Götaland: Maritima klustret i Västsverige | Grupper | LinkedIn

The second part of the webinar was delivered by Magnus Engelbrektsson, executive secretary of the CPMR North Sea Commission. Magnus, a self-proclaimed “generalist”, started his international career long before he became the executive secretary of CPMR North Sea Commission. CPMR stands for Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions, and is a think tank and lobbying organisation for more than 150 regions from 24 states from the EU and beyond, representing about 200 million people. It comprises 6 geographical commissions corresponding to Europe’s main sea basins and islands. With their joint voice, they want to campaign for their common challenges regarding territorial cohesion, maritime governance, transport and energy/climate policies. Despite having “peripheral” in its name, its mission is by no means unimportant.

The CPMR North Sea commission is a cooperation platform for regions around the North Sea, including Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and a few members in the United Kingdom. Their main work focuses on developing and lobbying for policies, fostering transnational initiatives, and encouraging knowledge exchange in the North Sea region.

According to Magnus, there were no EU development strategies for the North Sea, as opposed to the Baltic or the Mediterranean. In November 2020, the CPMR North Sea Commission adopted the North Sea Region 2030 strategy to work towards a more productive and sustainable, climate neutral, connected and smart North Sea Region.

To achieve the goals, the North Sea Commission worked out specific key areas they will focus their effort on. Magnus pointed out that there is currently a lack of coordinated maritime spatial planning across borders and administrative levels in the North Sea Region. Fisheries and aquaculture is a crucial sector for the countries in this region, but a sustainable blue economy is what the North Sea Region is aspiring for. Moreover, for the highly industrialised countries around the North Sea, energy efficiency, sustainable renewable energy production, carbon capture and storage are aspects that should not be overlooked. Most importantly, climate change does not affect countries in the North Sea region the same way, and the North Sea Commission’s goal is to make the entire region more ready, adaptable and resilient to climate change. Last but not least, Magnus emphasised that the scope of the North Sea goes far beyond its maritime space – it encompasses the land and region home to new and innovative industries and highly skilled workforce that would take actions towards a smarter North Sea Region.

(Credit: Magnus Engelbrektsson)

For more information on CPMR North Sea Commission and the development strategies, see: presentation slides from Magnus

The two speakers touched upon different priorities and strategies and highlighted the goals Region Västra Götaland and CPMR North Sea Commission want to achieve in 2030. Common recurring themes revolve around cooperation among sectors and different levels of government, cohesion, innovation, capacity building and skill sharing and a blue economy that is circular and sustainable.

(written by: Felicia Ridderbjelke and Yiqi Lin)

The post ODF Sweden Webinar Series – Governmental Strategies appeared first on ODF Sweden.

ODF Sweden’s Webinar Series

Yixin Zhang — Thu, 25 Feb 2021 01:37:00 +0000

ODF Sweden endeavors to turn ocean data into innovation opportunities for the digital blue economy. We have brought people from various domains to create data-driven innovations. For example, to better understand the Swedish ocean ecosystem diversity, to investigate the impacts of climate change on ocean ecosystem diversity, we built models to predict the spread of invasive species, and combined AI and citizen science to analyze a large amount of deep-sea videos across decades to identify the ocean species. We are also predicting algae bloom to help oyster farms and the tourism industry. You can read more about ODF Sweden’s projects here.

In the ODF Sweden’s Webinar Series, we have invited the following speakers, as listed below. We meet on Zoom and try to wrap up within one hour. Please connect through button below:

Meeting ID: 592 916 7010.

December 1, 2021, 12pm
Mafalda de Freitas, Project Manager of the PELADRONE project and CEO of Peniche Ocean Watch
PELADRONE – Digitally transforming Portuguese SME fisheries and coastal communities
A blog post on this webinar
Recording of the webinar:

June 14, 2021, 1pm
Andrea Cabrera, IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute
Assessment of Abundance and Distribution of Oysters along the Swedish West Coast Using Towed Video
A blog post on this webinar
Recording of the webinar:

May 20, 2021 1pm
Alex Alcocer, Oslo Metropolitan University.
Miniature underwater gliders with autonomous deployment and recovery capabilities
The webinar covered work in progress, the presenter has requested that the recording is not published.

April 30, 2021, 1 pm
David Langlet, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg.
Law as Facilitator (or Obstacle) for Science Based Marine Governance
Recording of the webinar:

April 15th, 2021, 12 pm
Jonas Hentati Sundberg, Department of Aquatic Resources, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
Using AI and citizen science to reveal seabird secrets.
A blog post on this webinar

Recording of the webinar:

March 16th, 2021, 12 pm
Magnus Engelbrektsson, Executive Secretary of the North Sea Commission.
Cooperation between maritime regions: CPMR and the North Sea Commission
Jessica Hjerpe Olausson, Maritime expert at Region Västra Götaland
The strategic development plan for VGR 2021-2030, implications for the Blue Economy
A blog post on this webinar

Feb 25th, 2021, 12 pm
Thomas Mennerdahl and Sarah Alkhateeb, MMT Sweden AB:
Deep learning to assist in reporting of subsea pipeline inspection
The webinar covered work in progress, the presenter has requested that the recording is not published.

Data-driven innovation is an attractive approach and a challenging approach. As one of the pioneers in combining AI and ocean data for ocean relevant innovations, ODF Sweden has been learning and gaining experiences and knowledge. We would like to share our learning, and also invite experts who are working on data-driven innovation in various contexts to share their expertise.

Look forward to the webinar series!

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