Introduction
Aquaculture is expected to play an important role in addressing global challenges such as climate change, limited resources, and the growing demand for sustainable food and bio-based products. In this context, algae cultivation is becoming increasingly relevant, as it can provide biomass for food, feed, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and other applications, while also contributing to circular bioeconomy models.
At the same time, working with algae is not straightforward. Information about species, cultivation conditions, processing technologies, and market applications is scattered across many different sources, including scientific papers, databases, and industry reports. This makes it difficult for stakeholders to get a clear overview and to make informed decisions, for example when selecting suitable species, identifying cultivation locations, or evaluating production strategies.
In the AlgaeProBANOS project, we address this problem by developing a set of digital tools that bring these different types of information together and support more data-driven decision-making across the algae value chain.
A Digital Ecosystem for the Algae Value Chain
The tools developed in Work Package 4 are designed to work together as a small ecosystem, following a simple pipeline from data collection to analysis and decision support.
At the base, we developed automated data collection and integration tools that gather information from different sources, including open-access scientific publications, Wikipedia, biodiversity databases, marine observation systems, and project-specific datasets. The goal here is not just to collect data, but to clean, structure, and connect it in a way that makes it usable across the other tools.
On top of this data layer, we built the Algae Knowledge Base, which allows users to explore algae-related knowledge through a simple question–answer interface. The system uses a retrieval-based approach, meaning that it looks up relevant scientific sources before generating an answer. This makes the output more reliable and traceable compared to general AI tools, and better suited for domain-specific questions such as cultivation conditions or application areas.
The interactive Algae Farming and Products dashboard provides a more visual way of exploring the data. Users can browse species, look at their geographic distribution, identify producers, and explore possible product applications. In practice, this makes it much faster to answer questions that would otherwise require searching across multiple databases and sources.
Finally, the Algae Economist focuses on the economic side. It allows users to define simple production scenarios and get an estimate of costs and key indicators such as LCOP, ROI, and IRR. This helps in getting a first idea of whether a certain production pathway is economically interesting or not.
All tools described here are publicly available and can be accessed online at https://algaeprobanos.eu/digital-tools/
Results and Impact
When used together, these tools support a simple but practical workflow. Users can start by exploring species and regions in the dashboard, then use the Knowledge Base to better understand the biological and technical aspects, and finally use the Economist to check whether a given scenario could make economic sense. This allows stakeholders to: identify promising species and locations access relevant knowledge more quickly connect biological data with industrial applications and perform basic economic assessments
Based on initial use within the project, the main benefit is a clear reduction in the time needed to gather and connect information, together with better transparency in how decisions are made.
Conclusions
The tools developed in AlgaeProBANOS show how digitalisation and AI can support more informed and structured decision-making in algae aquaculture. Instead of relying only on fragmented data and experience, stakeholders can use integrated tools that combine data collection, knowledge access, visual exploration, and economic analysis.
This becomes particularly important in the context of global change, where faster and more reliable decisions are needed to develop sustainable and scalable aquaculture solutions.
Acknowledgment
This work was conducted within the framework of the AlgaeProBANOS project – "Accelerating algae product development in the Baltic and North Sea", which has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101112943.