#MarineScience - The SmartOcean Forum taking place at Titanic Belfast over the next two days (5-6 November) aims to establish Northern Ireland and Ireland as leaders in the development of ICT products and services for global marine sectors.
The Invest Northern Ireland-sponsored event will focus on developing high-tech products and services for traditional sectors such as fisheries, aquaculture, transport and security and emerging sectors such as renewable ocean energy and environmental monitoring, and ocean observation.
The forum will give insights on emerging markets, policy and opportunities for innovation associated with the launch of Horizon 2020 in 2014 and will focus on the challenges for SMEs to drive innovation in an emerging marine technology sector. It will also explore initiatives and investment for capacity build to develop a marine ICT sector here that can derive economic benefits from our ocean.
There are a number of opportunities emerging through local and international initiatives and we need to be in a position to work with Atlantic partners in the sustainable development of our ocean resource.
NI Minister of Enterprise Trade and Investment, Arlene Foster, said: “Today’s SmartOcean forum follows our recent Northern Ireland Investment Conference which successfully highlighted to an international business audience the strengths that we have to offer.
"Programmes like SmartOcean allow us to continue building on our traditional strengths of engineering excellence and our long history of innovation, whilst developing new skill sets to meet the needs of the fast changing world of technology and renewable energy, and with it bringing real opportunities for economic growth and development.
Minister Foster added that her department "has been leading on the development of the Northern Ireland Innovation Strategy. Fundamental to this strategy is the concept of open innovation and collaboration. The rapid rise of innovation in technology and the emerging opportunities coming from the marine sector offers considerable scope and opportunities for those companies who are willing to finding new innovative ways of working and developing.”
Meanwhile, Maire Geoghegan Quinn, EU Commissioner for Research & Innovation, highlighted the "strong convergences between SmartOcean and our plans for ocean-related research and innovation in Horizon 2020, the EU’s new research and innovation programme.
"By bringing together the best ICT experts, marine technology providers and marine scientists in Ireland, the SmartOcean cluster has created the right innovation environment to harvest the potential of the blue economy. Research and innovation are essential to unlock the potential of marine energy and the marine bio-economy and to use deep-sea resources in a sustainable way.”
The SmartOcean Forum aims to build on the Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance between the EU, United States and Canada, launched at the Marine Institute in Galway last May.
A goal of the alliance is to develop a transatlantic ocean observation system which will increase our understanding of the oceans and promote ocean innovation through improved access to a broad range of ocean data.
Marine Institute chief executive Dr Peter Heffernan, who opened the forum, said: “Our ocean territory is our greatest natural resource and the need to understand and manage it has never been greater.
"We have a huge opportunity to lead the way in marine ICT to support the sustainable development of our ocean resource. And we are steadily working towards the targets set out in [the Irish] Government’s Harnessing Our Ocean Wealth - An Integrated Marine Plan for Ireland to ensure that our ocean wealth will be a key component of our economic recovery and sustainable growth, generating social, cultural and economic benefits for all citizens."
Other speakers at the event include Dr Gilles Ollier, head of sector for earth observation and director general for research and innovation with the European Commission; Karen Skinner of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency; and Suzanne Kelly, deputy director of the US Integrated Ocean Observing System programme with the NOAA; while representatives from Microsoft, SAP, Cathx Ocean and Magnet Networks will give keynotes.
