The dissemination and communication activities are key to maximise the impact of the project through the proactive promotion of its objectives and results, with the target to promote the design tools which will be produced and released for their future exploitation. The DTOceanPlus consortium decided that all dissemination, communication, training and education activities will be reported and evaluated at the end of each year of the project. This document is the third annual report on dissemination and communication activities.
During the last year of the DTOceanPlus project, actions were exclusively dedicated to promoting a deeper understanding of the design tools, aiming to engage with target groups to facilitate adoption and usage of the DTOcean+ software and influence decision-making authorities, lobbies, policymakers regarding the uptake of the suite.
The number of visits per month to the project website is on average of 1,418, remaining far above the initial objective of 300. We can see that visitors are coming from EU countries and countries with ocean energy important projects underway. The duration of visits remains stable overall. All online PDF files were downloaded, with around 84 files downloaded each month, representing more than 4 times the initial objective. Among the most downloaded are the technical and market analysis reports. The most visited pages are mainly the ones with the link to DTOcean 1.0 and 2.0, those explaining the project and those focusing on the outputs.
Twitter and LinkedIn members who viewed project updates every month are significantly above the objective of 500. The size of this community fluctuates from month to month, certainly due to an alternation between strong moments with rich news and moments with fewer communication topics. Posts that generated most interactions are related to the release of standalone alpha versions of the tools, the education and training activities. The involvement of the project partners in the publication and sharing of posts shows their commitment and is a strong point for dissemination activities.
Activities related to mainstream media are very efficient thanks to the magazines and the newspapers channels. They give a lot of visibility to the project and the results. For example, OffshoreEnergy.biz has a monthly audience of 3,962 engaged users in the field of marine energy. There was no appearance on TV or radio, but this can be seen as partly compensated by the very large number of articles that appeared in the print media.
Several studies carried out during the project have been or will be published in recognised open access scientific journals. This allows the methods developed and results obtained to be promoted to an academic community that extends beyond the ocean energy sector. The datasets, also deposited in open access, will be very useful to technology and project developers.
The partners mobilised strongly to promote the developments carried out in the DTOceanPlus project at international conferences. The number of presentations, posters and oral communications is beyond the objectives. The valorisation of the project results at virtual fairs proved to be not very efficient, and most of the trade fairs have been cancelled or postponed.