Successful Copernicus Ocean Hackathon and Workshop series in Iceland.

The Copernicus Ocean Hackathon 2025, held at Reykjavik University, brought together 31 participants across 8 teams to develop innovative solutions addressing major ocean challenges using Copernicus marine data. Organized by the Iceland Ocean Cluster, Startup Iceland, and Náttúrufræðistofnun, the event focused on four themes: marine pollution, overfishing, climate change, and biodiversity loss. Over three days, participants attended expert lectures, received mentorship, and worked intensively on data-driven projects. Winning ideas included sustainable marine carbon sequestration (Kelpture), fish stock safety through AI (Ocean Guardian), and aquaculture optimization (Blue Insight). The hackathon was featured on the news in the national media (RÚV), and several teams plan to continue developing their solutions with ongoing support. The event highlighted the power of Copernicus data in fostering entrepreneurship, sustainability, and innovation in the Blue Economy.

The Copernicus Workshop Series in Iceland, held in October 2024, brought together more than 120 participants from academia, public agencies, and private companies for a hands-on learning experience with Copernicus data and services. Organized by NSII with presentations also from Mercator Ocean, EEA, and ECMWF, the series included dedicated workshops on Land, Marine, and Atmospheric services. Participants used Jupyter notebooks to explore real-world datasets focused on Iceland, including marine heatwaves, land cover changes, and air quality monitoring. The workshops featured expert presentations from Copernicus service providers and local users, blending theory with practical training. Highlights included the mix between of presentations from local users and experts, to showcase Icelandic uses, interaction between students and professionals and the presence of European Agencies to present directly to Icelandic users. The strong engagement, both onsite and online, and the open sharing of resources via GitHub created a collaborative environment that empowered participants to start working with Copernicus data in python.

The main achievements are:

Hackathon:

• New connection between students and blue economy companies to introduce Copernicus
• Further idea development after the hackathon in the Icelandic Ocean Cluster
• Excellent teaching opportunity of Copernicus Marine data and services to students and entrepreneurs from different fields

Workshop Series:

• Hands-on data use with Jupyter notebooks about Iceland
• More than 120 participants
• Broad spectrum of participants, from students, to professionals both from public and private sector.