Strengthening cross-regional DIH collaboration in aquaculture innovation support services
AquaHubs is a joint project between 3 Digital Innovation Hubs coming from 3 countries – Croatia, Finland and Lithuania. The projects’ consortium partners are relatively diverse in their expertise, focus domains and targeted regions, yet are interconnected by mutual interest to share knowledge and experience in facilitating the growth and uptake of aqua-tech innovations within their respective countries.
The overall goal of the AquaHubs project is to strengthen collaboration and joint activities of AgriFood Lithuania DIH (AFL), the South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (XAMK) and AgriFood Croatia (AFC) in respect to innovation support services for the aquaculture and fishery sub-sectors of agrifood. Specifically, the project revolves around supporting digital technology-based innovation projects for open sea, coastal and inland aquaculture and fishery, organized into 3 Innovation Experiments (IEs).
More specifically, the strategic targets of the AquaHubs project will be the following:
- A framework on aqua-tech needs assessment – A process of practical interaction with SMEs developing IEs within the aquaculture and fishery industry, where the requirements and needs of their endeavour are being identified and evaluated. The compendium of relevant resources that we will establish will be, in this case, the source of suggested decision-making tools as well.
- A programme of knowledge exchange and capacity building – A holistic approach with the aim of establishing a compendium of available resources and tools that will enhance the digitization of the aquaculture and fishery industry, provided to future IEs but, also, to every stakeholder interested in the sectors, through the organization and implementation of targeted workshops, test-before-invest sessions, demonstrations of suggested innovative technologies and business strategy development.
- A set of tools for each relevant stakeholder of the aquaculture and fishery industries (Innovation development SMEs, End-users, DIHs and CCs, Policy making/implementing bodies) – The outcomes of the abovementioned strategic targets (1, 2) will be translated into practical, available to everyone and reusable tools, specialized to each relevant target group of the aquaculture and fishery industries, such as policy recommendations, commercial exploitation strategies, tools for assessing the commercial benefits of innovation by end-users, etc.
Our aspiration for this project is to establish a compendium of available resources to all the relevant stakeholders of the aquaculture and fishery industries, that will evolve into the reference point of the sectors regarding knowledge sharing and good practices. We aim at creating a structure that will promote and provide long-lasting business relations amongst stakeholders on a cross-regional level and access to a reserve tank of digital innovative resources that will be open and available to be reused by any interested party.