Road and rail managers must maintain their networks to ensure the safety of passengers and the reliability of transport services. The management of earthworks is particularly challenging as many of these assets were constructed prior to modern engineering standards, meaning that earth/rock slopes and embankments are of poor construction quality. More frequent extreme weather events due to climate change are rapidly worsening the situation and increasing the occurrence of earthwork failures. At present, infrastructure managers are forced to make decisions about where to implement remediation works based on disparate information from various data sources, and are constrained by annual budgets. Gavin and Doherty Geosolutions Ltd. has developed an innovative software solution, DETER, which can be used to conduct a risk ranking of earthworks and to support decision making for optimised budget spending to prevent failures along road and rail networks. This is the leading Decision Support Tool available for the management of earthworks that is based on novel scientific algorithms, providing a quantifiable risk assessment for each earthwork asset. The product is at a TRL of 7 as it is currently being used by the national railway operator in Ireland to manage 3,700 earthwork assets. GDG aim to become the leading provider of DETER and intend to commercialise this innovative tool within the European and global markets. To do so, this feasibility study will conduct a detailed market analysis to establish the scale of the market opportunity and to verify that DETER is the leading solution for the management of earthwork assets. The feasibility study will also include a technical review of the compatibility of DETER with existing databases through engagement with infrastructure managers, a review of existing commercial barriers, and the development of a commercialisation strategy for GDG to bring this product to market, resulting in an elaborated business plan for DETER.

The project aims to strengthen EU efforts towards achieving climate neutrality and achieving green energy and environmental targets. SeaDream plays a crucial role in making sure marine energy is utilized sustainably and coastal environments are preserved in line with EU policies. The development of a high-resolution water quality data service at sea is at the core of SeaDream's mission. Data such as these are crucial to addressing specific questions regarding maritime renewable energy generation and storage. The project integrates local monitoring data and advanced modeling through the development, testing, and demonstration of novel downstream information services in an operational mode. As a result of this integration, marine activities related to the generation and storage of energy are improved, and environmental objectives are not compromised. By harnessing advanced data and fostering collaboration across sectors, the project aims to contribute significantly to the EU's environmental and energy targets, promoting a path towards climate neutrality. In order to achieve SeaDream's vision, a coordinated research program that thrives on collaboration is implemented. In this program, leading teams from academic and private sectors are seconded within and outside the EU. Collaborations are enhanced by periodic workshops and summer schools that disseminate the latest findings and promote market-relevant knowledge application. It is designed to foster the advancement of knowledge and career development for both experienced and early career researchers and professionals. To ensure this, secondments and training activities are structured to ensure a comprehensive approach to learning and development. Additionally, the SeaDream consortium includes nonacademic partners from various stakeholder groups, which facilitates direct application of project results.

WEDUSEA led by Irish Wave Energy Developer, Ocean Energy, will demonstrate a grid connected 1MW OE35 floating wave energy converter (known as the OE Buoy) at the European Marine Energy Test Site (EMEC) in Orkney, Scotland. This rigorous technical and environmental demonstration will happen over a 2 year period in Atlantic wave conditions with outcomes directly impacting policy, technical standards, public perception and investor confidence. The project will demonstrate that the technology is on a cost reduction trajectory in line with the EU SET Plan targets and will be a stepping stone to larger commercial array scale up and further industrialisation. The action will integrate sub components such as moorings and PTOs - improving efficiency, reliability, scalability, sustainability and circularity of the technology. The combined actions of the work programme are expected to reduce the LCOE for the technology from €361/MWh to €245/MWh, a 32% reduction. For a 20MW array the LCOE would reduce from €185/MWh to €127/MWh. The project has 3 clear phases, phase 1 the initial design phase leading into a Go/No Go, phase 2 Demonstration in which it is expected that the baseline device will generate in excess of 1,650 MWh over the deployment and Phase 3 Commercialisation and Dissemination which sees the capitalisation and exploitation of the results. Ocean Energy and other consortium companies will actively exploit the results through new innovations, products and services. The results will be disseminated to feed both environmental databases and IEC electrotechnical standards. This action will take wave energy beyond the state of the art, building on the partners experience in prior EU projects enabling arrays of reliable devices to achieve the 1GW target set out in the 2030 DG-ENER Offshore Renewable Energy Strategy. Planned engagement will create more public perception, empower and inform policy makers and de-risk larger scale investments to meet the 2050 targets.

To fully realise the potential of the European Digital Twin Ocean (DTO) to empower citizens, entrepreneurs, scientists and policymakers with accessible knowledge about ocean and coastal domains, new models, tools and methods are needed to understand and assess the complex interactions of social, economic and ecological factors. ECOTWIN delivers innovative graph theoretic solutions, developed using a multi-actor approach with policy makers, local communities, marine and coastal industries and communities, to address the challenges of modelling marine socio-ecological systems and integrating these models into the emerging DTO framework. Innovations include four different classes of novel socio-ecological models based on concepts from mathematics (graph theory), control engineering (stability), computer science (generative AI), statistics (Bayesian theory) and information science (entropy), combined with dynamic participatory feedback from stakeholders, and methodological protocols enabling seamless integration with DTOs by accounting for the interoperability, accessibility, reliability and sustainability of transdisciplinary data. The models comprise: 1) quantitative causal graph theoretic models, 2) qualitative causal graph theoretic models, 3) network models with participatory feedback and 4) parallel generative AI models. Through validation in four use cases in the North Sea (Belgium, Germany), Celtic Sea (Ireland), Thracian Sea (Greece) and Waterford Harbour (Ireland), tools will be developed for assessing scenarios including the relationships between factors including ecosystem services and health, geopolitical factors, fishing job losses, tourism and marine renewables development. Results will enable what-if scenario analysis and impact assessments, exploring the interconnected impacts of environmental changes, human pressures and policy implementation to empower better decision-making to support ocean health social prosperity and a thriving blue economy.