Hydroacoustic Digital Twin for Safe and Sustainable Offshore Industries

Summary

The main objective of this project is to further develop the Underwater Acoustic Digital Twin, so-called Hydrotwin and test it in real environment.

Introduction

The Hydrotwin aims to provide real-time information about underwater soundscape, allowing the end-user to access information about detection and tracking of anthropogenic or natural sources of noise, such as dolphins/whales/cetaceans, underwater vehicles, surface ships. The Digital Twin (DT) also allows computes underwater noise levels and sound maps that can be used to manage and mitigate environmental impacts of offshore activities (e.g. oil&gas, offshore wind, aquaculture and shipping).

The expected outcome of Hydrotwin is to contribute for the safety and sustainability of offshore activities by smart monitoring and control of the underwater environment, in particular to:

1. Ensure a soundscape suitable for the local species: marine animals use sound as the main sense to interact in their environment (e.g. detecting preys, communicate, breeding), it is therefore of major importance for their welfare.
2. Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by decreasing ship-based environmental monitoring activities at sea.
3. Identify underwater threats early, allowing for mitigation or action measures to be adopted, by detecting events that produce underwater noise (e.g. undetected vessels, high-speed boats, underwater vehicles).

This project entails a holistic system based on acoustics recording, artificial intelligence (AI) for identification, numerical acoustic propagation models and tools, IoT for data streaming and data science visualization tools; it is therefore an underwater digital twin system.

Funded by

GreenOffshoreTech

This SME Innovation Project has received cascade funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the GreenOffshoreTech project and Grant Agreement No 101005541.

Disclaimer

This document reflects only the author’s view and the Commission, the Agency and the GreenOffshoreTech Consortium are not responsible for any use they may be made of the information it contains.