🌊 “Hack the Ocean 2023” was an outstanding success: it was truly inspiring to witness the ingenious solutions that the teams presented.

🚀 A total of 13 carefully selected participants from the Nordic region came together to address the challenge of “How might we design a viable and sustainable multi-use concept at sea that promotes co-existence in the Nordic Ocean Space.”

🎉 We extend our heartfelt congratulations to all the participants, with special recognition for the winning team consisting of Leidy Lagos, Thomas H. Lambaa Giehm, and Vahid Abbasi!

🙌 We also express our deep appreciation to every participant who invested their unwavering dedication and contributed to creating a unique learning environment over the course of two remarkable days.

👏 A big thank you goes to Justine Vanhalst for her exceptional guidance throughout the hackathon!

🙏 We are also immensely grateful for the invaluable expertise provided by our mentors: Ottó Elíasson, Ásta Olga Magnúsdóttir, Magnus Yngvi Josefsson, Bryndis Steina Fridgeirsdottir, Jennifer Lynn Schwalbenberg, and Allyson Beach.

🌟 Throughout the event, the teams developed innovative solutions, crafted prototypes, and presented their ideas to our distinguished panel of judges, including Heiða Kristín Helgadóttir, Anne Katrine Normann, Bala Kamallakharan, Paula Gould, and Maryke Musson.

A truly sustainable blue economy is one that optimises the use of resources and fosters collaboration.

Multi-use at sea is one way that we can optimise the use of ocean space by placing multiple, often competing, marine industries in the same location, sometimes referred to as co-location.  Such co-location presents an opportunity for symbiosis and collaboration which could have both environmental and economic benefits.

A number of projects have pioneered this idea, such as the UNITED PROJECT which has, for example, piloted combining offshore wind energy installations, with shellfish and seaweed culture.

Yet we still lack clear business models for multi-use at sea.  What would a profitable and sustainable co-location look like in reality?  What could a self-sufficient multi-use platform at sea look like?  What are the low-hanging fruits and win-win situations for this new blue sector?

We need big blue ideas

To address some of these questions the Iceland Ocean Cluster will run a hackathon funded by Nordic Innovation and focused on multi-use at sea.  To do this, we have teamed up with Centre for the Ocean and the Arctic who are experts in the field, located in Norway where an established research and innovation sector devoted to multi-use at sea, with an industry that has already been engaged in the topic.

The project will be further supported by The Danish Ocean Cluster, Denmark, Kalundborg Symbiosis, Denmark and Eimur, Iceland who all bring expertise in collaboration, industrial symbiosis and multi-stakeholder engagement.