Overview
Corrosion is a silent yet pervasive threat wherever steel meets water — from maritime structures and port systems to water treatment plants, desalination units, and offshore renewable installations. In Europe alone, corrosion-related costs exceed €500 billion annually, about 3.8% of EU GDP. Despite this enormous burden, industry lacks a unified, real-time, and predictive approach to assess where, when, and how corrosion occurs.
Many existing solutions remain reactive, leading to overmaintenance, unexpected failures, and wasted resources. SOCORRO was conceived to respond to this challenge: a multidisciplinary initiative combining sensing, data analytics, AI, and decision support to transform corrosion management from reactive to proactive.
Objectives
- Provide companies with independent, objective means to assess corrosion risks in their installations.
- Develop a fast, in situ sensor system that continuously monitors relevant environmental markers in submerged steel environments.
- Create statistical and AI models to interpret collected data and estimate cumulative corrosion risk over asset lifetimes.
- Demonstrate and validate the system across sectors — wind turbines, ship hulls, ballast tanks, harbour sheets, desalination, process water.
- Deliver an intuitive dashboard / decision-support interface presenting risk metrics, alerts, and actionable insights.
Demonstration Sites & Living Labs
SOCORRO is grounded in real-world validation through living labs at the Port of Ostend & Vlissingen, the Corrosion Lab at Antwerp Maritime Academy, and instrumented ship hulls, harbour structures, and wastewater environments across 11 industrial sites.
Partners & Funding
A collaboration of 15 core partners and over 32 observing partners spanning academia, industry, and public institutions across Europe, including Antwerp Maritime Academy (lead), KU Leuven, Ghent University, Sirris, and Université de Lille. Funded under the Interreg 2 Seas programme (project code 2S07-031). Ran March 2020 – September 2022, with ongoing follow-on support and maintenance.
