CETMAR’s Marine Technologies Unit performs work at a regional, national and European level in environmental and marine monitoring systems and develops associated technological solutions. In this line, can you assess the level of development and application of ICT technologies in the Galician maritime sector?
All areas at CETMAR work in very diverse initiatives in terms of territorial scope, although we can say that our track record is especially remarkable at a European and international level. The Marine Technologies Unit, indeed, has among its main lines of work in the field of operational oceanography everything from tracking, maintenance and calibration to the development of environmental monitoring devices for the marine environment. The application of ICT in this context is essential, both in capture, storage and data transmission devices, and in their further processing and exploitation. We can say that ICTs are probably the best example of Key Enabling Technologies (or KET) and therefore, they have penetrated in an obvious way in the marine and maritime sectors in the past few decades and produced very significant progress in all areas of application: navigation, fishing technologies, predicting environmental conditions and parameters, monitoring and managing the different uses of the marine environment and the activities performed at sea, prevention and response capabilities before pollution episodes and accidents, etc. While this is also true, obviously, in the specific context of Galicia, at CETMAR we believe that the possibilities of further improvement are increasing, as long as a proper integration of the knowledge and skills in ICT and the specific knowledge about the marine environment and the activities performed in it is made and encouraged. Isolated development of ICT solutions for their application in the marine and maritime environment rarely succeeds because the marine environment is particularly complex and it is essential to have a good knowledge of it in order to design implementable solutions.
From your point of view, how would you improve the communication flow between research centers and SMEs in the maritime sector?
This is a very open question, and it is not easy to give a general answer. If we are aiming to improve communication as a process, we must think about which elements integrate a communication strategy and tackle these elements, the components of the strategy, one by one, identifying possible improvements: it is necessary to have well-defined goals, to identify partners properly, to prepare messages adequately, to be clear about what we want to communicate and why, to select the best channels, to determine timings and frequencies, to manage expectations carefully, to build trust, to generate responsiveness, etc. All this seems simple, but it is actually not, it requires a clear, structured understanding of these components, resources and time. At CETMAR we think this is precisely one of the areas where we can be of assistance in these processes: we know the marine and maritime context, we have a wide network of contacts and collaborators in this context at a regional, national and international level, we can help co-build the messages needed for communication processes, to select appropriate channels and formats,... We can be of help, and in fact this has been our role in numerous projects, in establishing effective communication flows between research centers and business organizations and/or administrations, but also between these and many other organizations and groups representing society as a whole, an aspect of communication processes which has proved extremely important. CETMAR is recognized in several European projects as an entity with ability and experience in strengthening collaborative networks and promoting participatory processes with the involvement of critical stakeholders for research and innovation projects in the marine environment.
According to CETMAR’s annual report, during the year 2014 114 new research projects and services were launched. Which of the undertaken projects would you highlight?
This information is not correct. In the 2014 annual report which is published on our website, it says that we worked on 58 projects of which 14 were new initiatives launched that year. This information can be accessed through the following link: http://www.cetmar.org/DOCUMENTACION/MemoriaAnual/index.html It is not easy to select projects to highlight, but in general, within CETMAR we give special importance to the Centre's presence in international and European initiatives. As we are well into 2015 we can provide information about some of the new projects achieved in the first calls of the H2020 program. CETMAR, while maintaining some active projects initiated in the Seventh Framework Programme, is already actively participating with a very strong presence in two projects of the new H2020 program: PRIMEFISH and COLUMBUS. Since we mentioned earlier CETMAR’s capabilities in the interaction and engagement of stakeholders, these two projects are good examples of what the Centre can do at this level. In COLUMBUS, for instance, communication and stakeholder relationship strategies are an essential part of a European network of 26 organizations, aimed at promoting methodologies and generating specific capabilities to implement in specific strategies for knowledge and research results transfer in the marine and maritime contexts. CETMAR participates in most of the project’s work packages and leads the work package designed for determining a methodology for analyzing research results generated in European projects in recent years, in order to estimate their potential impact on users and draw upon this analysis to design specific transfer strategies. Finally, it is responsible for a node of competencies in the field of governance and management of the marine environment. The project was launched in March and we hope to soon begin to share experiences and achieved results in the process we are launching.
To what extent do you think the STAMAR project can contribute to improving the competitiveness of the maritime sector?
All efforts made in the direction of promoting the application of knowledge and technology in the marine environment are necessary to achieve the ultimate goal of accomplishing the realization of the growth and development possibilities the sea offers, and they should be made in a sustainable way, without compromising the same or better possibilities for the future. It should be stressed however that it is convenient that, before the emergence of initiatives to promote marine and maritime technologies in our community (or in those in which institutions from our community are involved), clear work coordination strategies are established, integrating the entities operating in the specific marine and maritime context as much as possible from the start, to avoid the dispersion of efforts and the never desirable saturation of the target audience. Nonetheless, from CETMAR we want to thank the efforts made from STAMAR to integrate our contributions in several of the project processes.
Do you think it is possible to give continuity to STAMAR’s philosophy in Galicia once the project ends?
It is difficult to assess this issue. It would probably be necessary to have an analysis of the impact of the initiative, and identify what worked best and worst as well as the improvement opportunities that were generated. If we only talk about its philosophy, then definitely the intensification of efforts in communication and knowledge and technology transfer in the marine and maritime context is necessary and strategic for our community. In any event, CETMAR would see very favorably the strengthening of the chances of progress for the implementation of that philosophy with a collaborative approach and a balanced consideration of the history and the potential role of institutions who work in a specialized manner in the marine and maritime environment, not just CETMAR, but CETMAR should take part. This is an entity that is very open to collaborate and which can and in fact acts as a driving entity for many of its partners, but in order to play this role, it is best to acknowledge and facilitate to a greater extent our role as an intermediary body between the generators and users of knowledge and technologies in the marine and maritime context.
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