In the framework of WP2, the objective of NEANIAS is to develop and integrate at EOSC three innovative cross-cutting services (TRL 8) for tackling operationally underwater-related studies and engineering tasks towards engaging several user communities including: archaeologists, geologists, oil & gas/ engineers, renewable energy planners, marine robotics, civil engineers, computer vision/ machine learning software engineers and insurance.

Being aware of the depth, shape and type of the seafloor (bathymetry) is fundamental for understanding ocean circulation, tides, tsunami forecasting, fishing resources, sediment transport, bottom currents, environmental change, underwater geohazards, submerged remains of underwater cultural heritage, cable and pipeline routing, mineral extraction, oil and gas exploration and development, infrastructure construction and maintenance and much more. WP2 embrace co-design under an agile methodology that spans all project activities, where service consumers and providers are engaged in a cycle of requirements, design, implementation/verification, evaluation, feedback. WP2 activities are amplified by engagement and onboarding activities, ensuring the potential of sustainability from the perspective of adoption and uptake.

An introduction to the innovative services for the Underwater environment

The thematic services that NEANIAS proposes considers the following:

• U1- Bathymetry Mapping from Acoustic Data service:  The U1 service will deliver an advanced user-friendly, cloud-based version of the open source MB-System software for post-processing bathymetry through Jupyter notebooks with additional functionalities. The package is programmed and constantly maintained under GNU GPL 3.0 (Open Source License) on Linux/Unix/Mac platforms and has several dependencies to other open source packages like GMT, PROJ, OTPS and so on. With Jupyter Notebooks we see the opportunity to let users with different background handle bathymetric post-processing via predefined workflows. The cloud-based service created for this project would create an easy to use agile and fit-for-purpose workflow of multibeam data processing as simple as upload the data, choose and apply basic filters/corrections, define the desired resolution for grids/maps and retrieve the data products from the cloud server.
• U2- Seafloor Mosaicing from Optical Data: The U2 service aims to provide an operational solution for large area representation (in the order of tens of thousands of images) of the, predominantly flat, seafloor addressing also visibility limitations from the underwater medium. The current landscape of solutions for underwater optical mapping is still very tied to particular developments. As such, there is not yet any available attempt at dealing with a wide range of imaging conditions that are present in underwater surveys. The effort in U2 is the first in its kind towards this goal powered by the cutting-edge infrastructures of EOSC. The challenge of the development behind this service is to make it robust to a wide range of input imaging conditions, which are representative of the intended science and commercial applications of the target user group.
• U3- Seabed Classification from Multispectral, Multibeam Data: The U3 service focuses on the efficient exploitation of recent cutting-edge multibeam echosounders which go beyond the standard ones that collect backscatter at a single predefined frequency and can acquire backscatter at multiple spectral frequencies allows the acquisition of spatially and temporarily co-registered multispectral backscatter data offering capabilities for systematic and accurate mapping of the seabed. Based on recently developed classification framework the goal is to further optimize and develop an efficient and robust multispectral, multibeam data processing system integrating advanced machine learning tools for seabed classification.

Achievements, Business opportunities and potential beneficiaries

Underwater surveys have numerous scientific and commercial applications in the fields of archeology, geology, biology, and energy involving tasks. More specifically, this will be a significant easier entry point for the targeted users/customers going from raw data (U1) to maps, aided by an agile and fit-for-purpose service, allowing them to create higher resolution maps compared to DTMs shared by initiatives like EMODNET and GEBCO. Moreover, scientists and marine operations companies can benefit from acquired images as they provide, from the cognitive point of view (U2), the most precise and accurate representation of the areas surveyed, enabling a detailed analysis of the structures of interest. In addition, the novel seabed classification service (U3) will engage specific user-communities through the foreseen demonstrations in several underwater datasets addressing current needs of archeologists, submarine volcano/geohazards, energy power cabling planners and oil & gas engineers.

Τhe main achievements of this semester focused on Requirements, Specifications & Software Development Plan for Underwater Services. The requirements have been identified and assessed in order to set the co-design and service specifications for the software development plan on the three innovative EOSC services that NEANIAS will implement.

The service requirements have initially been arranged according to their type. Five distinct categories have been recognized: storage, computing, cloud, functional and quality requirements. Another significant aspect while co-designing the specifications of the underwater services is their ranking. This ranking is based on the feasibility and the effort required to satisfy the requirement in relation to the corresponding value expressed by the users. Regarding the software development plan, different components and modules are currently developed and validated towards the deployment of the U3 service to EOSC. This plan also reflects the work and similar deployment architecture of all underwater services.

With respect to the defining of the service requirement a quantity of interdisciplinary databases of case-studies of the end-users communities were collected and analyzed. One of the assessments of the collected data and, in a second step, the definition of the requirements is that a big part of the end-users communities share common needs as far as the analysis and the documentation of the seabed morphology and swath surveys is concerned. These requirements in the scientific analysis are fundamental regardless of the individual objectives of each research and underwater survey. In many aspects, this means that the NEANIAS EOSC services have the potential of being useful, if not indispensable, to a great majority of the scientific underwater community internationally, regardless of different scientific goals and approaches for specific final results and products. Therefore, through this task we were able to reach one of the goals of our work and demonstrate the applicability of the new cross-cutting services for diverse user-communities.

The next steps continue with the work towards the first release of the services, followed by the first evaluation and assessment by the end-user community and the external advisors.