Seven successful applicants will be awarded funding under the Marine Institute’s SmartBay National Infrastructure Access Programme (NIAP) following the 2018/2019 funding call.
The awardees will receive support of around €25,000 per project to trial and validate their technology and/or gain access to data feeds to carry out scientific research at the SmartBay Marine and Renewable Energy Test Site in Galway Bay.
The call was open to both academia and industry, and other relevant organisations, on the island of Ireland to access the SmartBay test site and subsea observatory.
The chosen organisations may deploy equipment on the test site, connect to and access the underwater observatory, and analyse the many data feeds which are collected on site every day.
Over the past seven years, more than 50 projects have been awarded funding, facilitating a wide range of multi-disciplinary marine research, development and innovation at this national facility, the Marine Institute says.
Welcoming the announcement, the institute’s outgoing chief executive Dr Peter Heffernan said the funding awards “are aligned with the goals of the national Marine Research and Innovation Strategy 2017–2021”.
This year the following projects were awarded funding:
- Dublin City University — Demystifying the ocean through underwater video analysis: marine life activity detection, classification and indexing for the SmartBay ocean observation platform
- Sligo Institute of Technology — A small waterplane area twin hulled (SWATH) tide buoy with real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning for accurate (centimetre level) tide gauge calibration
- Queen’s University Belfast — Can introduced marine infrastructure enhance the conservation of vulnerable species?
- Dundalk Institute of Technology — Wave parameter estimation from oscillating water column pressure signal - Phase 2 electronic optimisation of the WASP
- Galway Mayo Institute of Technology — Environmental DNA/RNA metabarcoding for monitoring marine biodiversity in Galway Bay, with particular attention to marine invasive alien species
- Danalto Ltd — LoRaC2.4: a geolocation technology for the marine environment
- NUI Galway — Wave resource characterisation at the Galway Bay Marine and Renewable Energy Test Site
The first projects are preparing for deployment and testing over the coming month.
SmartBay is Ireland’s national marine test and demonstration facility for the development of innovative products and services for the global maritime sector. The National Infrastructure Access Programme is funded by the Marine Institute under the Marine Research Programme with the support of the Irish Government.