Data Science and e-infrastructures can help Aquaculture to improve performance and sustainability

BlueBRIDGE receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 675680 www.bluebridge-vres.euBlueBRIDGE receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 675680 www.bluebridge-vres.eu

Data science and e-infrastructures can help aquaculture to improve performance and sustainability!

BlueBRIDGE Workshop 11 January 2017

Brussels, Belgium

Kostas Seferis, [email protected]

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A few words about the sector• Aquaculture is the fastest growing food industry that now

accounts for nearly 50 percent of the world's fish that is used for food.

• Global population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050 and as populations increase, so too does the need for food.

• This need cannot be covered by increase of intensive poultry and swine production or agriculture.

• Global production is forecasted to increase from 45 million tons in 2014 to 85 million by 2030

• Aquaculture will be the protein provider for the world!• Producers are looking into ways to increase their production in a

sustainable way.

"Understanding how ecosystems of EU e-Infrastructures can boost Blue Growth", 11 January 2017, Brussels

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Needs and challengesIn the next years, the sector will have to produce high quantities of fish in an efficient and environmental friendly way.

Is it easy?

Not at all!

There are a number of challenges that have to be addressed in an integrated way, for all the stakeholders: companies, investors, governments and the academia


Challenges for the industry

Improve performance in terms of cost, feed conversion, growth rate and mortality

and at the same time, Reduce the impact on the environment

Performance improvement and environment protection go hand by hand!

4"Understanding how ecosystems of EU e-Infrastructures can boost Blue Growth", 11 January 2017, Brussels

Challenges for policy makers

Identify the best areas for future development and expansion

Understand the impact of current and future farms on the environment

Develop policies and regulatory frameworks


Challenges for investors

Where to invest?Where to achieve the best fish growth and, at the same time, less diseases and mortalities?

What will be the ROI?What are the environmental conditions in an

area?


Challenges for academia

Develop new growth modelsIdentify production best practices

Better understand the relationship between environmental and regional data and fish

performanceDevelop models for the assessment of the

environment impact


Bluebridge ReplyBluebridge infrastructure provides a set of innovative e-services to address these challenges. It benefits all the stakeholders of the aquaculture sector, in an integrated way, using the same infrastructure. It supports

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Companies to maximize the growth rate, reduce costs and minimize the impact on the environmentInvestors to make efficient identification of strategic locations of interest and select the most profitable investmentsGovernments and environmental agencies to evaluate the current situation and define policiesResearchers to generate new knowledge and evaluate the practical indicators of aquafarming performance


And we want to go further…

• Have a wider positive impact on the sector• Change the mentality of the companies to be

more open and more positive in cooperation and data exchange

• Help them to understand the benefits of working together, data exchange and benchmarking

• Bring all the stakeholders together, and especially the SMEs (build bridges!)


A few words about us

• We are the aquaManager team (www.aqua-manager.com), one of the leading IT systems for production planning, management, cost analysis and financial forecast for aquaculture. It is used by companies in Europe, Africa, Middle East, USA, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, etc.

• We are also an SME (22 people company)• We know the sector, needs and challenges• We have an extensive network of contacts (customers and

partners) all over the world. This will help Bluebridge exploitation


http://www.aqua-manager.com/

OK, let’s see a practical exampleHow Bluebridge can help companies to improve?


How a company can improve?

By optimizing feeding and feed conversion, making best use of the feed

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Reducing mortalities

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Improving growth

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better financial performance and less impact on the environment


How this can be achieved?

It is not only equipment and hardware!Companies need tools that allow them to develop optimized feeding and growth models and do better planning. Especially for SMEs, this is very difficult to be done. They don’t have the necessary resources.This is the objective of BlueEconomy platform: provide to the sector the necessary tools to generate optimized feeding and growth strategies


This is what our system does

It takes historical data as input, and produces models for feeding, growth and feed conversion. It provides “what if analysis” i.e. and running multiple production scenarios.It also supports benchmarking.


Why through BlueBRIDGE ?

• Impossible to develop it from scratch – a big infrastructure is required

• Use of cloud and e-services best practices• A new paradigm of work• Infrastructure that allows the platform to scale

up (the model generation algorithms are resource intensive)


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Provided ServicesBlueBRIDGE offers analysis and simulation algorithms to the aquaculture community, through the project infrastructure

Theses services enable companies to:• Calculate performance in terms of main

production KPIs• Develop feeding and growth models, based on

the realities and the conditions of each company. The result is accurate feeding, better predictions and plans, identification of populations that are not performing well.

• Benchmark their performance by comparing their results to “global” models for selected species and regions

Biological FCR – Av.Wt.Cat. 0-10 gr


UI Example: Model Visualization

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Feed Conversion Rate Model Feeding Model


UI Example: What-If Analysis


It is not only performance analysis!The platform also supports investment evaluation and spatial

planning


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Investment AnalysisBlueBRIDGE builds instruments for estimating of the financial performance of an aquafarming investment.

• Follows a cost-based investment analysis methodology for financial analysis• Assumes predefined target production volumes• Utilizes actual growth models• Assumes

• Several ownership, operation and production costs (food, labor, deployment, licensing etc)

• Financial factors (interest rate, tax rate etc)

• Yields:• Internal Rate of Return (IRR)• Cash Flows• and several other financial indicators


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Spatial PlanningBlueBRIDGE builds an open, spatial planning platform to support intelligent identification of areas to suit various needs: investors seeking maximization of investments, scientists seeking locations of socio-econo-environmental interest, policy makers seeking effects of choices on industry, ...

E.g. a potential investor may use these services to find out • How fast fish grow in the selected area?• Where can fish grow faster ?• What will be the final FCR, Mortality %,

Cost, ...?• What are the environmental parameters of a

region?• How an area’s economic and social

peculiarities affect financial performance?


THANK YOU

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Technology

Data Science and e-infrastructures can help Aquaculture to improve performance and sustainability