Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Sea2See (Innovative blockchain traceability technology and Stakeholders’ Engagement strAtegy for boosting Sustainable sEafood visibility, social acceptance and consumption in Europe)
Reporting period: 2022-07-01 to 2023-12-31
Sea2See is an innovative Horizon Europe project which main goal is to make actors with sustainable seafood practices more visible to consumers giving them a competitive advantage. Seafood traceability technologies are limited for assessment of sustainability indicators. In complex value chains, measurement shall be digitized, tailored to the needs of the stakeholders, easily accessible. This will transform the transparency and increase consumer trust in the seafood sector. Sea2See is based on an interdisciplinary approach where researchers, technology providers and nongovernmental organizations cooperate towards the creation and deployment of new knowledge in real life environment - specific tools, algorithms, data management, and engagement approaches. The partners combine specialists from the aquaculture, fisheries, social sciences, behavioural modelling and technology partners in the field of blockchain, digital management, AI and LCA. They develop a co-creation approach to sustainable seafood transparency and traceability, alongside a blockchain-based platform for seafood industry-specific traceability data collection and a standardized LCA framework.
The work is divided in several interrelated lines of working efforts:
1) We focused on implementing an effective stakeholder engagement, developing methods to allow proper value chain actors identification, engagement and evaluation, and creating base knowledge on challenges and opportunities for the implementation of blockchain traceability tools on the seafood market, the alignment of technology innovation with certification practices and labels, and benchmarking of existing seafood products certification practices.
2) We established a consumer engagement strategy. Starting by the identification of barriers to responsible seafood consumption and product acceptance through a Collective Intelligence Methodology and formulate the Consumer Engagement Strategy as a roadmap for effective consumer interaction. An online Hackathon was organised to develop a complementary tool based on blockchain technology to support consumers in making informed decisions while buying or consuming seafood. Partners conducted engagement initiatives in Spain, Portugal, France and Greece. The project is developing a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to be launched in June 2024 to promote awareness of sustainable seafood practices.
3) We held co-design workshops to design and develop a set of tools to operate blockchain nodes in all data capture locations. Specifications of interfaces between companies and expected functionalities for each involved product from pilot cases have been created. Documentation on the blockchain blocks and data structures on data storage protocol have been designed and provided, so project partners will be able to construct and share data. Deployment of Sea2See environment was realised, connected to two other environments (with their blockchain nodes), to execute development tests and connector tools: i) one for Fishery Use Case that can collect data from a mobile application (the first professional mobile app) and ii) the interfacing of information systems for data integration of the aquaculture producers (SmartWater Cloud). A Use Case scenario about octopus' fishery, using a dummy dataset, to feed a web application has been tested.
4) The work on the functioning of the blockchain traceability platform and its different components was defined, and the necessary infrastructure to start sending data into the traceability platform was deployed (Three Control Towers made accessible). The necessary infrastructure to support the data workflow from the data access platform for aquaculture demonstrators to the traceability platform was deployed and initial data from producers is being collected. The automation data capture directly from the Fisheries platform and transfer to the traceability platform is being developed.
5) The traceability platform will be deployed in real life environments: i) An octopus’ fishery in Portugal, ii) 2 aquaculture sites in Spain and Greece, and iii) a third country importer of seafood. Stakeholders of the value chain from the octopus case study have been involved, and a dedicated mobile application has been developed, connected to the Sea2See Platform for data exchange in different languages. The aquaculture demonstrators started collecting data on the data transfer platform..
6) To do a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), Impact and Market uptake, the data to estimate the lifecycle for octopus, sea bream and meagre was defined. Seafood quality and safety are being monitored based on studies about legislated and not-very frequent contaminants (fatty acid profile, lipid quality indices, protein quality, vitamins and minerals). Partners are identifying Key Exploitable Results and a first Exploitation and Business Plan has been elaborated.
1) We focused on implementing an effective stakeholder engagement, developing methods to allow proper value chain actors identification, engagement and evaluation, and creating base knowledge on challenges and opportunities for the implementation of blockchain traceability tools on the seafood market, the alignment of technology innovation with certification practices and labels, and benchmarking of existing seafood products certification practices.
2) We established a consumer engagement strategy. Starting by the identification of barriers to responsible seafood consumption and product acceptance through a Collective Intelligence Methodology and formulate the Consumer Engagement Strategy as a roadmap for effective consumer interaction. An online Hackathon was organised to develop a complementary tool based on blockchain technology to support consumers in making informed decisions while buying or consuming seafood. Partners conducted engagement initiatives in Spain, Portugal, France and Greece. The project is developing a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to be launched in June 2024 to promote awareness of sustainable seafood practices.
3) We held co-design workshops to design and develop a set of tools to operate blockchain nodes in all data capture locations. Specifications of interfaces between companies and expected functionalities for each involved product from pilot cases have been created. Documentation on the blockchain blocks and data structures on data storage protocol have been designed and provided, so project partners will be able to construct and share data. Deployment of Sea2See environment was realised, connected to two other environments (with their blockchain nodes), to execute development tests and connector tools: i) one for Fishery Use Case that can collect data from a mobile application (the first professional mobile app) and ii) the interfacing of information systems for data integration of the aquaculture producers (SmartWater Cloud). A Use Case scenario about octopus' fishery, using a dummy dataset, to feed a web application has been tested.
4) The work on the functioning of the blockchain traceability platform and its different components was defined, and the necessary infrastructure to start sending data into the traceability platform was deployed (Three Control Towers made accessible). The necessary infrastructure to support the data workflow from the data access platform for aquaculture demonstrators to the traceability platform was deployed and initial data from producers is being collected. The automation data capture directly from the Fisheries platform and transfer to the traceability platform is being developed.
5) The traceability platform will be deployed in real life environments: i) An octopus’ fishery in Portugal, ii) 2 aquaculture sites in Spain and Greece, and iii) a third country importer of seafood. Stakeholders of the value chain from the octopus case study have been involved, and a dedicated mobile application has been developed, connected to the Sea2See Platform for data exchange in different languages. The aquaculture demonstrators started collecting data on the data transfer platform..
6) To do a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), Impact and Market uptake, the data to estimate the lifecycle for octopus, sea bream and meagre was defined. Seafood quality and safety are being monitored based on studies about legislated and not-very frequent contaminants (fatty acid profile, lipid quality indices, protein quality, vitamins and minerals). Partners are identifying Key Exploitable Results and a first Exploitation and Business Plan has been elaborated.
Several relevant results have been achieved:
• Stakeholder identification and engagement strategy, mapping Fishery and aquaculture stakeholder groups.
• Benchmarking existing seafood products certification practices, analysing several fisheries and aquaculture labelling, and certification schemes in terms of their traceability requirements, creating a scoring matrix to prioritize Certification Schemes (CSs) with a wide geographical range, traceability requirements and a label available to consumers.
• Mapping of Barriers to Seafood Consumption in 4 European countries, with a total of 362 barrier statements collected, analyzed, categorized, and prioritized for each country.
• Technical specification on Object Model and Test traceability platform deployment & Message Builder development.
• Specifications for transforming octopus fishery auction data into EPCIs models
• Stakeholder identification and engagement strategy, mapping Fishery and aquaculture stakeholder groups.
• Benchmarking existing seafood products certification practices, analysing several fisheries and aquaculture labelling, and certification schemes in terms of their traceability requirements, creating a scoring matrix to prioritize Certification Schemes (CSs) with a wide geographical range, traceability requirements and a label available to consumers.
• Mapping of Barriers to Seafood Consumption in 4 European countries, with a total of 362 barrier statements collected, analyzed, categorized, and prioritized for each country.
• Technical specification on Object Model and Test traceability platform deployment & Message Builder development.
• Specifications for transforming octopus fishery auction data into EPCIs models