Óbidos lagoon monitoring project beats Ocean Hackathon

O project of an “environmental intelligence platform” for monitoring the Óbidos lagoon won the 3rd edition of Ocean Hackathon and will represent Portugal in the international competition final in France.

Named Lagoa Risk Radar, the project proposes the development of a platform to accompany the evolution of Lagoa de Óbidos, in the municipalities of Óbidos and Caldas da Rainha, district of Leiria, based on a prototype that already integrates real information, released the University of Leiria and West (ULO).

The 3rd edition of Ocean Hackathon took place at the Escola de Turismo e Tecnologia do Mar (ESTM) in Peniche, between 16 and 18 this month.

Lagoa Risk Radar “looks to respond to a concrete challenge”, as “despite the amount of environmental information and existing scientific knowledge, these [are] often dispersed and are not always easily accessible or transformed into useful information to support decisions,” explains the ULU in a statement.

The solution describes, “passes through the integration of official data, environmental observations, scientific knowledge and artificial intelligence into a platform that allows monitoring the evolution of the lagoon and identifying relevant changes”.

The prototype that won the contest “already integrates real information from different sources and allows demonstrating, through simulated scenarios, the potential of continuous environmental monitoring and a future ability to anticipate changes”, is added in the note on the project, which will represent Portugal at the international competition final, scheduled for December 10, in Brest, France.

Among the next steps are the deepening of the integration of local measurements, the strengthening of scientific validation and the approximation of the platform to entities and communities that know and depend on the pond of Óbidos.

The project was developed by Rafael Bugia, individual promoter of the challenge, Miguel Oliveira, researcher of MARE – Centro de Ciências do Mar e do Ambiente, Diogo Santos, student of ESTM, and Pedro Durães, student of the School of Technology and Management, all of ULO.

The team expressed “the ambition of transforming the prototype into a permanent environmental observatory, capable of contributing to a more informed, preventive and sustainable management of the Óbidos lagoon and, in future, other coastal ecosystems”, it can be read in the statement.

The 3rd edition of Ocean Hackathon brought together 20 participants, organized in five teams and supported by 15 ‘coaches’ from different areas, who worked for 48 hours to develop solutions to ocean-related challenges, based on data analysis and use.

“ It is impressive to see the ability of the teams to develop ideas and introduce innovative solutions in just 48 hours, with the potential to respond to real ocean-related challenges,” said Ocean Hackathon local organization Celso Alves, quoted in the statement.

According to this person, the event represents a starting point for the development of the blue innovation ecosystem in Peniche, “approaching the academy, research and development and industry”, and giving the winning team the opportunity to directly integrate the ideation program boosted by SmartOcean – Hub Peniche in order to continue the development of the solution and create conditions for its future application.

Ocean Hackathon integrates an international innovation network dedicated to developing solutions to Ocean challenges.

The edition of Peniche was organized by the local hub of the Hub Azul – Smart Ocean Network, in partnership with ESTM, MARE, CiTUR – Centre for Research, Development and Innovation in Tourism, the municipality, BLUEBIO ALLIANCE, FCCN and the Hub Azul Portugal Network.