A NEW KIND OF OPEN INNOVATION EVENT THAT HELPS THE BLUE ECONOMY ECOSYSTEM SOLVE TOUGH TECHNICAL AND BUSINESS CHALLENGES TOGETHER
WHY
The Blue Economy is stuck at a tipping point: “sustainable transformation” has been en vogue in ministerial cabinets and board rooms, but in the real world the progress is slow. A new level of creativity and collaboration for sustainability – as well as a clear focus on immediate business needs – is needed for the Blue Economy companies to make progress towards sustainability.
Hack Blue Transition brings sustainability and business needs together to unlock transformation and to develop concrete solutions to business challenges, such as development of ports as energy hubs, getting ready for hydrogen, accelerating arrival of autonomous vessels and many others.
ABOUT
Hack Blue Transition is an Open Innovation event aimed at creating ingenious, unorthodox solutions for the maritime industry and its greater ecosystem. Its purpose is to help you to come up with new ideas, to explore new business models and new technologies, and to immediately test these ideas with your fellow participants. You’ll also forge new collaborations to help you start implementing your ideas the day after the event.
The aim of Hack Blue Transition is to come up with new ideas that solve shared business challenges. HBT challenges are developed by the maritime ecosystem. The hackathon will allow participants to build working relationships to enable future projects, by spending time working purposefully together, developing a better understanding of other player’s context and developing a mutually beneficial approach to executing new ideas.
Here’s how all of the
Hack events work
Day 1
- Deep dives in the problems and opportunities delivered by a cross- functional team of experts
- Two rounds of ideation and networking
- Team formation and networking sessions
- Idea stretching and validation with experts and users
Day 2
- Solution mapping, elaboration and validation with experts & prosumers
- Presentations to peers and panelists
- Reception & networking
THEMES OF HACK BLUE TRANSITION
Port Transition
Enhance role of ports in the sustainability transition of the Blue Economy, from playing a stronger role in circular economy to accelerating adoption of autonomous vessels.
CHALLENGES
- ADVANCING AUTONOMOUS OPERATIONS:
Ports are hot spots of economic activity with plenty of operations on water, quays and industry. Many of such operations and transport activities will increasingly become more automated and autonomous.How might we identify key infrastructure and services that ports and their ecosytems would need to accommodate autonomous activities at scale, and facilitate future development of autonomous activities?
- PORTS AS CIRCULARITY HUBS:
Resource scarcity & rising cost, waste generation, all inherent to the linear economy model are increasingly exposing limits of the current consumption model. Shifting to re-using, re-cycling of materials will involve a substantial change in regional & local material flows across waterways and coastal seas, giving ports & waterways an opportunity to play a substantial role in circular economy and generating new revenues.How might we identify early opportunities for ports & waterways to accommodate these circular material flows?
Energy Transition
Tackle energy storage and utilisation offshore as well as offshore-land connectors. Improve grid stability, develop multi actor zones (integrating wind farms, aquaculture …) and work on getting ready for hydrogen!
CHALLENGES:
- SHIPPING NEW MOLECULES
Belgium and other Western European countries can’t generate green energy in the quantities needed, meaning that we need to look into more solutions. At the same time, the incentives are not lining up yet for major business to start make a shift to new energy sources.How might we set off the chain reaction for transition of the current – classic – fuel-shipping fleet to transport new kinds of energy-carrying molecules?
- NOVEL ENERGY STORAGE
Next to renewable energy generation, energy storage is crucial for the energy transition, to make renewable energy consistently available.How & where might we accelerate experimentation with energy storage solutions like hydrogen and novel batteries for the needs of the maritime industry?
- CIRCULAR MARINE INSTALLATIONS
As offshore renewable energy is booming, the resource scarcity is likely to make these installations even more costly as they are very large and resource-hungry (think steel, copper, composite materials).How might we design offshore assets in a circular way, more friendly towards maintenance (reassembly), reuse, refurbishing , and harvesting of materials?
Logistics Transition
Develop the digitalization of logistics and the role of ports for autonomous vessels. Expand multimodal connections and work on cleaner and more optimal vessel propulsion.
CHALLENGES:
- IMMEDIATE DECARBONISATION
To reach the 2030 decarbonisation goals, the maritime sector needs to substantially accelerate transition from fossil fuel-powered engines to decarbonised propulsion, to go from “rethinking” its carbon footprint to action. Major reporting obligations on carbon footprint are imminent.How might we identify the immediate steps towards decarbonisation, and then catalyse this transition?
- ENABLING AUTONOMOUS SHIPPING
Fewer people are choosing a career a skipper or mariner, so crew shortage & strict crewage regulations are having a crippling effect on waterway transport locally & regionally,What pilot or test project might help the autonomous shipping create trust to become accepted more readily, by the authorities and the public?
- ACCELERATING SYNCHROMODALITY
Maritime logistics are scaling rapidly, but the distribution of the growing amounts of goods from the seaport further inland is becoming a bottleneck. At the same time, many inland barges, trucks, and trains are running at below optimal efficiency.How might we enhance resource sharing through synchromodality across the entire logistics ecosystem?
Operations Transition
Leverage new technologies to improve efficiency, increase sustainability of operations, and improve crew comfort and well-being.
CHALLENGES:
- MONITORING MARINE ASSETS
Assets in marine, coastal, and port environments like wind turbines, breakwaters, offshore substations are already complicated to access and monitor. Climate change creates less predictable, more extreme environmental conditions, making asset management even harder.How might we deploy new remote monitoring technologies and techniques to safely and effectively monitor marine, port, and waterborne assets?
- AUTONOMOUS OPERATIONS
Many “operations” (offshore, dredging, construction, heavy lifting, …) are being performed manually or – at best – semi-autonomously due to the nature of these complex and challenging environments. How might we accelerate deployment of the latest improvements in technology & interfaces to make operations autonomous hence more efficient, more safe, more environmentally friendly, and to minimise human errors and downtime?
- EXTREME WEATHER OPERATIONS
Operations in exposed environments (coasts, offshore, rivers, open water) are subject to less predictable and more extreme environmental conditions (winds, water levels, waves & currents) due to Climate Change Impact.How can we serve the need for futureproof Weather downtime & Workability tools to perform difficult yet crucial operations to avoid unsafe, unfeasible and loss time during installation & operational activities out on the water
- GROWING BANDWIDTH
As ships are becoming a more integral part of the digital environment, they generate substantially more data that needs to be communicated back to the shore. Plus, needs of the crews (from health and safety to entertainment) are also growing.How might we create new opportunities for drastically increasing bandwidth available, through both novel technological solutions and clever usage of existing assets?
SOLVING PROBLEMS AS AN ECOSYSTEM
Others can be solved just by having an open conversation between the stakeholders, or by applying a fresh perspective to old problems.
That’s why we make sure that the entire blue economy ecosystem is represented at Hack Blue Transition, that the atmosphere of the event supports open and frank conversations, as well as creates the trust necessary to build the collaborations necessary to solve Blue economy’s most pressing issues.
HOW IS THE CONTENT OF HACK BLUE TRANSITION CREATED?
- Become a partner and bring a challenge that you want the ecosystem to work on.
- Join one of our ecosystem workshops to give your input on the challenges proposed by the partners.
Four upcoming Ecosystem Workshops (one per theme) are your first opportunity to learn more about the Themes and the Challenges of Hack Blue Transition, to have an impact on the content of the event, and of course to start building new connections with other future participants.
take part?
KEY ECOSYSTEM ACTORS
Port and port service providers, energy companies, shipping and logistics companies, construction companies and specialised engineering & consulting firms
Mature companies
Technology companies, IT service providers, insurance companies
STARTUP ECOSYSTEM
Startups and startup organizations (incubators, clusters, etc.)
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Research institutions, IT and tech service providers
OTHER INVOLVED PARTIES
government, NGOs and consumer organizations
KNOWLEDGE PARTNERS
PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS
Experts
The humans behind Hack Blue Transition.
Meet Mark Bollen, Hack Blue Transition's Curator
For more than 15 years Mark has been active in Offshore, Marine & Coastal Engineering worldwide, helping port authorities, governments & contractors with innovative and digital solutions. Sprayed by waves offshore gathering data or problem solving using bits & bytes to design new dredging or construction methods.
Becoming an innovation designer & future foresight strategist was a logical next step. He wanted to learn how to face the big challenges and transitions of today. Needless to say he feels like a fish in the water at this hackathon.
If you’re fluent in nerd: Closely involved in Hydro-Informatics, Remote Sensing, Dredging Projects and Offshore Works and Renewable Energy. Conceptual setting up of Online Real-Time Decision Support Systems, Forecasting of dredge plumes, water quality, Hydrodynamics, Waves, and online visualisation systems, Ports, Estuarine and Coastal studies.
Environmental management and performing sediment plume studies for tenders/planning and execution phase in capital dredging projects, maintenance dredging projects, marine gravel dredging, coastal protection and harbour extensions.
Involved in complex metocean measurement campaign organisation and data processing, interpretation and reporting.
Project manager in various offshore, coastal, estuarine and ports projects
