Smarter Aquaculture

Overview

Smarter Aquaculture is targeted at the Aquaculture sector and is focused on building on developing a multi-tenanted, cloud-based system where aquaculture users can upload, store, and analyse key farm production data. Smarter Aquaculture uses environmental factor forecast information and the aquaculture data and analyses it to predict and inform decision-making to optimise costs, minimise waste & maximise return.

Smarter Aquaculture is building the results of the Horizon 2020 project AquaSmart which saw the development of a cloud-based data analytics and benchmarking platform focused at Mediterranean species such as sea bass and bream. Smarter Aquaculture is extending   this work in a number of ways;

• Platform capability extended to more contexts including onshore sites such as pond/ river and different species (e.g. salmon, trout),
• Intelligent meta data mapping system for easy onboarding and data uploads,
• Recognise environmental data (weather, tidal) and build models to predict impact on production KPIs,
• Use sensor data collection where feasible

APIs to facilitate mobile data upload.

Implementation

Smarter Aquaculture is a microservices based analytics platform focused on the issues facing the aquaculture industry.

Building on the results of the Horizon 2020 project AquaSmart (https://tssg.org/projects/aquasmart/), Smarter Aquaculture is aiming to provide the following thus broadening the scope of the platform developed under AquaSmart:

• Build a historical repository of relevant environmental data (tide, weather, forecast) from sources such as MADIS (https://madis.ncep.noaa.gov/) and Copernicus (http://marine.copernicus.eu/)
• Application of machine learning techniques including regression models and time-series analysis to time series data collected from sensors, correlating with environmental data
• Application of analytics to producers in an Irish context, specifically fresh water trout, but also encompassing a dialogue with the salmon industry

Key Objectives

Smarter Aquaculture will deliver a commercially viable system with the following key benefits to producers;

Prediction: Smarter Aquaculture can predict environmental factor patterns and trends and determines their impact on production management practices and key outcomes. e.g. weather forecast, tidal conditions, O2, Salinity.

Feed:  An advanced data analytics framework automates the real time gathering of information and enables prediction of KPIs such as Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR) growth rates and harvest results which in turn enables better decision-making to improve fish weight gain to feed input.

Automation: Smarter Aquaculture’s takes all of the captured knowledge highlighted above and uses it to supports decision making through automation to achieve optimum KPI outputs to the point where there is minimal reliance on staff members depth of expertise.