It's more than 150 TB of maritime related data that the BigDataOcean platform hosts, since its development began in January 2017, and that R&D Nester presented in a workshop under the scope of the Project BigDataOcean.

This project, integrated in the EU Framework Programme for Research and Development Horizon 2020 (H2020), has been developed by a multidisciplinary European consortium and with the contribution of ENONDAS. The consortium has partners from Greece, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Portugal, in addition to R&D Nester.
Nuno Amaro, researcher from R&D Nester, together with Rui Lopes, from UNINOVA, partner of the REN and State Grid R&D Center, presented the main results achieved in the project, focusing in the BigDataOcean Platform, which became in the last two and a half years, in one of the largest maritime data repository. According to the R&D researcher, "it is expected that the quantity and variety of data continues to raise now that the platform is publicly available to all users".

With a life platform demonstration, Nuno Amaro briefly introduced the data currently existing and the platform potential, in addition to the four use cases currently implemented, focusing in the wave energy use case. As described in the presentation, the platform, which was developed mainly by three of the consortium partners (National Technical University of Athens, Ubitech (software house) and University of Bonn), has stored oceanographic / weather-related data (e.g. wave, wind, biology), IAS data (georeferenced and vessel navigation data), vessel operational data, and other georeferenced data (e.g. protected areas, location and characteristics of ports, among other).

The presentation was also focused in the wave power assessment pilot, which has been the main activity developed by R&D Nester in the project, with the collaboration of ENONDAS. This service has two main goals: the evaluation of wave energy potential, in locations or areas selected by the user and the evaluation of the potential for conversion into electric power considering wave energy converters. The services are created by correlating data with wave characteristics from multiple sources (numerical models, buoys, satellite) and allow platform users a significate time reduction while performing these studies, assuring the quality of obtained results.

The workshop was open to the general public and several external entities were represented, including DGPM (Portuguese Directorate-General for Maritime Policy), ISQ, LNEG, and multiple research centers related to offshore energy, among others.