Immersion Project: Sinay

Alessio Maglio, SINAY
 

Nowadays the marine environment sees the expansion of maritime activities as the potential of oceans and seas has been clearly identified as one of the main drivers for economic growth worldwide. However, an increasing number of key words take along with such economic growth in recent times: clean, healthy, safe, sustainable, transparent, accessible, smart, inclusive, and more. Such concepts can be found, for example, in the Blue Growth strategy of EU as well as the UN-Agenda 2030 (Goal 14). In parallel, the digital transformation of society as a whole is ongoing, and this is producing the development and spread of digital tools (mainly based on Big Data, high performance computing, and artificial intelligence) to all economic sectors, including maritime activities. This may be also seen like an incredible opportunity to ensure such sustainable growth, through the use of innovative digital tools that enable an intelligent management of the marine environment and its resources. One of the underlying concepts of this point of view is that ocean-based industries (including fisheries), regulators, environmental managers (such protected area managers), and the civil society at large may benefit from a strongly increased capacity of using data for extracting clear and scientifically robust information.

In this context, the SINAY company has built a maritime digital platform, a technology able to extract and provide high-quality marine environmental and technical data and information. The system is formed by a Big-Data architecture able to structure and store large volumes of marine data from heterogeneous sources, a HPC clustering system for fast processing, a bank of algorithms to perform robust analyses, and a customizable interface for displaying and accessing data, indicators, and advice. Data to feed the Platform are obtained from a wide range of data providers as well as from in-situ sampling programs and real-time monitoring systems.
 

Large amounts of data are today available for many maritime areas, and increasingly larger amounts of marine data will become available in the future. However, one challenge is the continuous discovering of new data and databases and the establishment of long-term connections with the Platform. The internship will be focussed on searching and qualifying maritime data to feed SINAY Platform. This implies several tasks, including documentary search (through internet), direct contact with data owners whenever needed, reception/download and exploration, preparation and load to the platform, organisation for analysis. The internship will include the analysis and reporting phases, and this will be shaped according to one (possibly more) use case(s) addressed by SINAY and linked to ongoing or future project of the company.

Another challenge is understanding the potential of digital tools to meet current and future needs of different players of environmental management/regulation. This challenge may be addressed through interviews of different stakeholders, according to the use cases addressed, to collect information on their needs and how to meet them.

Use cases currently available address the following topics:

-        Underwater noise pollution

-        Marine litters/plastics

-        (More potentially available)

The analysis phase and the output sought (at least a study report) may vary according to the use case. In general, GIS analyses should be envisaged; this will be done using GIS software (available at SINAY) or programming language such as R. Concerning the discovery of needs of potential users of digital tools in the marine environment, interviews of stakeholders will be organised following a pre-established questionnaire to be developed by the Intern. Results and findings will be summarised in a report.


 

Started Fall 2019

Current student: Aliyya Lathifa