Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MOCEAN INTELLIGENCE (Empowering SMEs to take part in the Ocean Industry with an Intelligent Platform that will support their Business decisions)
Reporting period: 2018-11-01 to 2019-02-28
The ocean holds $24 trillion in unused resources (renewable energy, aquaculture, fishing industry, oil and gas) which are currently inaccessible. What is stopping businesses and governments from accessing this wealth is the lack of easily available geo-marine data that could provide crucial information, regarding weather, seabed, resources or tidal currents. Such data is needed to make commercial decisions concerning offshore constructions, to fully exploit ocean energy and pursue a low-carbon, efficient and secured energy supply. MOCEAN INTELLIGENCE is a software that enables offshore construction companies to instantly identify a suitable construction site in the ocean: MOCEAN INTELLIGENCE gathers all relevant ocean data (meaning weather, water, soft and solid seabed) from multiple sources to automatically find the preferred location for offshore constructions, thanks to our data algorithms. The overall objective of the project is to further develop MOCEAN INTELLIGENCE to TRL9 and to launch it to the European markets.
In order to confirm the feasibility of the MOCEAN INTELLIGENCE, we have carried out a 4-month study on the technical, commercial and financial feasibility of our project. We have checked the technical developments ahead and prepared a complete execution plan for the development of MOCEAN INTELLIGENCE. We have performed an in-depth analysis of the target markets and developed a strong market strategy and a plan for its market launching, including the identification of main players and prospects in respective geographic markets and a preliminary analysis on IPR strategy. Financially, we have drafted a detailed 5-years’ financial forecast which confirmed the potential return on investment of MOCEAN INTELLIGENCE project, also accounting for a pessimistic sales forecast.
The work carried out during this term confirms the viability and relevance of MOCEAN INTELLIGENCE, since small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which account for 95% of all businesses and 77% of employment globally, cannot afford the costs of ocean data acquisition and are unable to compete for offshore resources. This is a main challenge in the maritime market which has been identified as a main driver of the future global economy: ocean energy technologies are currently being developed to exploit the potential of tides and waves as well as differences in temperature and salinity: the so called “Blue Growth”. Indeed, the Ocean Energy Forum Strategic Roadmap (Nov, 2016) identifies a path forwards, building on European leadership in ocean energy, and developing technologies that can meet a significant amount of Europe’s power demand over the next 35 years. There are over 24.000 SMEs in the ocean industry today that need affordable and actionable access to geo-marine data.