Smartbay Ireland

The MARITEC-X consortium aims to create a Marine and Maritime Research Innovation and Technology Centre of Excellence based in Cyprus to act as an enabler of scientific and business excellence in Marine and Maritime issues in the Eastern and broader South-eastern Mediterranean. The Centre will be aligned to the overall Smart Specialization Strategy for Cyprus (S3CY) and the European priorities on specific pillars with competitive advantages to the Cypriot economy. Focusing on key priority sectors identified within the Smart Specialization Strategy for Cyprus such as energy, tourism, transport and shipping, MARITEC-X Centre of Excellence will seek partnering relationships with well-known European institutions that will assist to the transfer of knowledge, co-develop sustainability and research programs, handover best practices and consult towards the creation of a critical mass of infrastructure and human capital in the region.

With the economic recession behind it, the economy of Cyprus is expanding at a rate comparable to that of the global economy. Despite this welcoming trend, the investment landscape in research, technology development, and innovation (RTDI), a key factor in the economic competitiveness and sustainability of Cyprus — remains stagnant, with bottom-up initiatives towards a change remaining fragmented and underutilised. As a direct result, the innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem of Cyprus remains at an embryonic stage, leaving Cyprus as a low-performing RTDI country within the European Union. Innovation activities in SSP cannot proceed without a solid scientific and research and technology development foundation. Despite Cyprus hosting three state universities (and a number of private ones) with a wealth of excellent research and scientific expertise, this significant resource remains untapped and rarely exploited beyond the confines of academia. To reverse this ultimately detrimental relation between research and innovation, Cyprus is in dire need of an intermediary to help the country rise out of its RTDI slumber. This proposal seeks the European Union’s support to establish in Cyprus a Centre of Excellence that fosters world-class research, technology development, and innovation activities. This will not be another academic entity but an institution developing practical solutions/products addressing the needs of the economy, and society, in Cyprus, the EU and the rest of the world in activities related to the marine and maritime sector. The proposed project, Marine and Maritime Research, Innovation, Technology Centre of Excellence (MARiTeC-X), seeks to play a key role in the country’s economic and social transformation through RTDI transformation, by setting up the Cyprus Marine and Maritime Institute (CMMI).

The MELOA project proposes to develop a low-cost, easy-to-handle, wave resilient, multi-purpose, multi-sensor, extra light surface drifter for use in all water environments, ranging from deep-sea to inland waters, including coastal areas, river plumes and surf zones. The device will be developed as an upgrade to the WAVY drifter conceived by the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, which was used to measure the surface circulation forced by wave breaking, including detailed structure of rifts and the littoral drift current (Jorge da Silva et al, 2016). The philosophy of the WAVY drifter will essentially be respected: a small-size sphere with just enough room to accommodate power source, GPS-receiver, communications modules, antennae, sensors and data processor; optimised buoyancy to prevent the drifter trajectory responding to the wind instead of the current, while providing just enough exposure of the antennae to ensure acquisition of the GPS signal at the required rate and reliable near real-time communications. Given the low influence of wind upon the drifters’ displacements, MELOA will provide a cheap effective way to monitor surface currents and surface dynamic features anywhere in the World Ocean. Through equipping the drifters with thermistors at two different levels, the possibility is open for monitoring “near-skin temperature” and near-surface vertical temperature gradients, which will be invaluable for calibration/validation of satellite derived SST fields.

The Marina proposal overall aim is to create an all-inclusive Knowledge Sharing Platform (KSP) catalysing and organising the convergence of already existing networks, communities, on-line platforms and services providing an online socio-technical environment that facilitates and stimulates the direct engagement of researchers, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), citizens, industry stakeholders, policy and decision makers, research funders and communicators for improving Responsible Research and Innovation. In particular, the project will establish, curate and experiment a Responsible Research and Innovation platform involving societal actors working together during the whole research and innovation process for aligning better both the process and its outcomes, with the values, needs and expectations of European society, integrating citizens visions, needs and desires into science and innovation, promoting RRI with focus on marine issues and pressures that have important effects on the European societies. The project activities and outcomes, even if connected with marine research field, will define this systematic approach in order to make it transferable and reproducible for any RRI thematic domain. All project results and activities will be extrapolated from the RRI marine field to general RRI and broadly disseminated. The expected outcome of the Work Programme is a clear improvement of the integration of society in science and innovation. The MARINA project will follow this strategic line of “strengthening and facilitating” the capacity of the research and innovation to align and integrate the social needs through a suitable knowledge sharing platform and federating activities.