Building The Twin

Once you have created a collaboration scheme with a solid foundation of trust with your end users and other stakeholders, it’s time to build your Digital Twin of the Ocean (DTO)! We have been using the term DTO in the past sections but we haven’t clearly defined what a DTO really is. A DTO is a digital representation of a real world system where data from a system is being collected in (near) real-time to create new tools or modify existing tools that can elicit change or influence the behavior of the system. In our case, the DTO for the Belgian fleet comprises of data-driven tools that can influence the decision of fishers and vessel owners in conducting their fishing activities that promote economic and environmental sustainability.

The next sections will guide you though the different steps of building a DTO for fishing fleet starting from data collection through onboard sensors, data transfer and storage, basic analytics and visualizations to using this data together with external data to develop operational predictive models. Each section will need basic knowledge/experience with certain software and programming languages and this will be indicated on top of the section in orange with the symbol 📣. Subsections will also have prerequisites (e.g., software installations) and these are indicated in green with the symbol 📋.