ODF Sweden is a consortium of partners from universities, the public sector, and private industry, primarily in Sweden. With so many different kinds of organizations, it is important to build a shared vision and understanding of each other’s motivations in order for ODF to succeed.
To facilitate building this shared vision and understanding among the partners, ODF Sweden developed the work package: “Continuous Evaluation and Innovation”. As part of this work package, ODF Sweden members – Yixin Zhang and Adrian Bumann, gathered data from ODF participants through an online survey. ODF participants were asked to introduce themselves and share their visions and ideas about ODF. Twelve members participated in the online survey in late September and October 2019. Below are some of the results from this survey.
Understanding Members’ Vision about ODF Sweden
For the question “Where would you like to see ODF in two years?”, members share the following visions:
- “As a national resource forum for students, researchers, governmental bodies and industry that is interested in sustainable use of our life supporting oceans.”
- “Be major platform for maritime environmental data in the academic and commercial world.”
- “All the 17 partners of ODF to reach higher capacity in crunching ocean data, and specifically using AI.”
- “ODF to be the place-to-go when it comes to crunching ocean data in Sweden, including AI solutions. This requires a long term solution for funding and lead.”
- “A national hub for AI innovations across scales and collaborating with international global networks “
- “That we are contributing to simplify the handling/collection of the realtime ocean data”
- “A platform for spin off projects, start ups, and academics research on big and complex data”
- “Established as an expert group on using ocean data for decision-making.”
- “A meeting place that brings Science and Industry together.”
- “I hope when people want to gain in-depth knowledge of the ocean, or when they want to solve certain ocean related problems, they will think about ODF.”
- “An established arena for applied research and development concerning marine applications.”
- “The No. 1 partner for data driven sustainable ocean innovation.”
- “As a part of an ocean digital platform together with Scoot, Koster Avatar and other initiative.”
Summarizing the visions, we can identify the following aspects:
- A platform for different parties to collaborate for ocean innovations
- A platform for projects, startups, research
- The place to go for Swedish ocean data
- Integrate AI into ocean data analysis
These visions are important, as they influence the scope of ODF and the goals ODF aims to achieve.
Understanding Partners’ Motivations for Joining ODF Sweden
For the question “What motivated you to join Ocean Data Factory?”, participants mentioned the following:
- “Always loved the water, the life in and on water.”
- “An independent data platform for maritime environmental data.”
- “SCOOT has at present focus on hardware, but this is just a mean to an end, which is data from the ocean. ODF offers SCOOT the possibility to focus more on data and data processing.”
- “I’m very interested in new technologies and innovations and would like to learn more about AI solutions to possibly bring back top SMHI. In turn we offer ODF our knowledge in data management, quality control and sources of data”
- “I am always interested to learn new areas.”
- “I love the ocean, I love data”
- “Important initiative for open data in Sweden.”
- “To continue to develop (our) skills in data modelling.”
- “I like the idea of open data, and I also like nature. I think in order to bring positive impacts, it’s important to first understand the object being examined/studied, and then design solutions. Without data, it’s almost impossible to make well-informed decisions or effective solutions. And the idea of open data means more people can have access to data, and hopefully more solutions can be created.”
- “…we are interested in new application domains for our technology concerning data capture and processing. Many interesting emerging marine applications. We want to learn more about the field and explore new applications.”
- “New applications, Products and businesses”
- “The need for a more flexible governance which digitalization can lead to.”
- “Fits well into (our) ambitions and includes strategic research partners.”
- “The massive possibilities and the great minds.”
Summarizing the motivations, we can identify the following aspects:
- Love for the ocean
- Interested in learning new things, new technologies, interested in the possibilities
- Interested in ocean data and ocean data processing
- Developing skills, applications, products, businesses
As suggested by the results, ODF participants have various motivations as to why they joined the project. These motivations actually align with the visions, i.e. build a platform for different parties to collaborate for ocean innovations; a platform for projects, startups, and research. ODF participants also have different skills, such as ocean data expertise and AI expertise, and integrating AI into ocean data analysis is the ongoing theme in ODF.
ODF Sweden partners continue to develop a shared understanding and vision for ODF Sweden, and we will follow up this post in a few months to see how things have developed.
