During the first eighteen months, RAMONES started working amid the international pandemic crisis that has dramatically affected mobility, supply chains, personnel recruitment, and services availability worldwide, and continued to work and stay successfully on track, handled the execution of its workplan across all project directions successfully, with minor reasoned deviations, issuing high-quality and complete deliverables, by exploiting the interdisciplinarity and diversity of the potential and expertise of the consortium partners to the benefit of the project goals and objectives.
Building on this foundation, during the last reporting periods, RAMONES successfully completed its objectives, culminating in the development and validation of its core technologies. A suite of novel instruments was finalized, tested in both laboratory and field settings, and validated. Key devices like the γSniffer radiation detectors, the SUGI hotspot-detecting camera, and the αSPECT radon spectrometer were successfully deployed in challenging real-world environments. These tests ranged from the shallow hydrothermal vents of Milos to the 500-meter-deep Kolumbo underwater volcano and a nuclear reactor's waste pool to measure anthropogenic radioactivity. The Benthic Lab platform, designed to host these instruments for long-term measurements, was also developed and demonstrated in the area of Santorini.
Moreover, an integrated, cooperative marine robotics system equipped with γSniffers was delivered and validated through field trials involving a surface vehicle and two autonomous underwater gliders. This system proved capable of mapping regions of interest, reacting to incoming measurements to define new survey zones, and following dynamically designed paths. The project also released advanced software featuring deep learning frameworks to identify radioactivity hotspots and new physics-driven models to estimate radioactive plume distribution. Additionally, an innovative risk forecasting system, POIS2ON, became fully operational, providing data-driven decision-making capabilities to a diverse range of stakeholders by forecasting exposure risks and calculating the probability of exceeding certain radioactivity thresholds.
In terms of networking and dissemination, the project managed to: (a) disseminate, communicate, as well as effectively shape the overall exploitation of its thematic and core objectives; (b) initiate fruitful collaborations and activities; (c) undertake a leading role in the Environmental Intelligence Initiative supervised by the EIC; (d) invest in user engagement to strengthen and secure the overall project’s impact. RAMONES continued its crucial role in the Environmental Intelligence consortium, preparing two new blueprints for future European Innovation Council (EIC) programme actions during this period. Finally, RAMONES vastly exceeded nearly all of its initial dissemination goals, strengthening and securing the project's overall impact on a broad audience.
