National Maritime College of Ireland

Funding

2007-2013 Atlantic Area Programme. ERDF, Interreg Atlantic Area.

Project Synopsis

The project concerns the demonstration, evaluation and dissemination of new robotic systems, sensors and networking technologies in operational environments of maritime incidents endangering human life, the environment and economy. Air and sea going robotic vehicles provide new capabilities to operate in dull, dirty and dangerous environments. Networking technologies enable the orchestration of existing assets and new robotic systems and sensors for enhanced situational awareness and intervention. New command, control and visualization tools provide new capabilities for the coordination of existing assets, robotic systems, sensors and human operators over inter-operated networks. These tools contribute to environmental assessments with high resolution and sensing diversity, provide reality checks for events generated in social networks and motivate constructive forms of public participation. The whole project will be developed w.r.t. a comparative worldwide review of lessons learned from past incidents involving ships carrying oil or hazardous and noxious substances, and special attention will be paid to the types of incidents where current practice lacks tools and technologies, and methodologies.

The project also aims at extending and strengthening the Research and Innovation Network for Maritime Incidents in the Atlantic Area. This will be not only to support the activities of the project, but also to ensure the perpetuity of the results. The project exhibits an Atlantic Area Dimension, since the regions in which the partners are located - Galicia, Basque Country, Bretagne, Ireland, United Kingdom and North of Portugal- encompass a representative and well distributed segment of the Atlantic Area and the issues addressed are very important challenges that are strongly shared by all the involved regions.

Moreover, each partner brings into the project complementary expertise that sits on the state-of-the-art of their specific areas, and, thus, by promoting the emergent systems and technologies to be shared by all partners, the project contributes to the territorial cohesion and to the elimination of imbalances between regions.

By proposing the assessment of novel superior approaches to deal with the various phases of the maritime incidents from the perspective of the environment, the project clearly addresses the Priority 2 – Protect, secure and enhance the marine and coastal environment sustainability of the Atlantic Area Operational Program, and with emphasis in the Objective 4 – Protect and promote natural spaces, water resources and coastal zones. Obviously, other objectives can also be considered, with emphasis for, Objective 1 – improve maritime safety. On the other hand, by pooling together advanced resources of a representative and balanced set of regions of the Atlantic Area in a very tangible context, involving the R&D system and significant operational organizations of the Atlantic Area to promote the environment and the maritime heritage, this project contributes to ERDF priorities. Clearly, there is also scope for important contributions for priority 1 – Promote Transnational Entrepreneurial and Innovation Networks

Partners

Lead Partner:
Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (PT)

FUAC - Fundación Universidade da Coruña (ES)

Portos de Galicia (ES)

TECNALIA - Fundacion Tecnalia Research & Innovation (ES)

ENSTA Britain, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Techniques Avancées (FR)

UL - University of Limerick (IE)

NMCI - National Maritime College of Ireland (IE)

APDL - Administração dos Portos do Douro e Leixões, SA (PT)

UK Spill Association (UK)

Further Info

http://atlanticprojects.ccdr-n.pt/project-area/netmar/project_view?page=Project%20details