Ocean2.eu is an H2020 proposal led by Mercator Ocean International, that aims to develop a Digital Twin Ocean (DTO) with a wide group of EU partners. It responds to the European Commission (EC) Green Call LC-GD-9-3-2020: Transparent & Accessible Seas and Oceans: Towards a Digital Twin of the Ocean, which is currently under evaluation by the EC Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD).
The Ocean is the largest ecosystem on Earth, absorbing about 90% of the warming and 30% of carbon dioxide produced by humans. The scientific community, governments and society as a whole are increasingly aware of how crucial it is to ensure the sustainability of the marine regions, from shallow waters to the deep sea. Ocean2.eu will build the first European Digital Twin of the Ocean (DTO) with the objective of making ocean knowledge available to governments, the private sector, citizens, entrepreneurs, activists, politicians and scientific experts alike. This will enable them to become partners in knowledge generation by facilitating interactions so that they may explore desirable futures and assemble their own twins in the pursuit of a healthy and productive ocean. As an interactive and user-driven initiative, Ocean2.eu will deliver a Digital Framework consisting of all marine data, modelling and simulation features, along with High Performance Computing (HPC) capacities, Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms and specialized tools that will form a new service capacity for accessing, manipulating, analysing and visualising marine information.