TechWorks Marine and DCU Water Institute kick off Disruptive Technologies project “Advanced Decision Support System for Coastal Areas”. TechWorks Marine and the DCU Water Institute announce their collaboration on a 3 year project following the joint award of €1.1M from Project 2040’s Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund.
The project, Advanced Environmental Decision Support System for Coastal Areas, will see the commercialisation of the DCU Water Institute’s optical sensor technology, and integration with the advanced data analytics capabilities of TechWorks Marine.
The decision support system will be based on information from a network of remote sensor nodes present in coastal waters capable of providing real-time monitoring of water quality parameters that are robust, reliable and cheap, integrated with multiple sources of large scale data. The information can be used by organisations such as regulatory agencies, commercial companies or government departments. The collaboration between an SME and a university ensures that TechWorks Marine provides a strong focus on the industry applications, commercial capabilities of the sensors and user requirements, while the DCU Water Institute provides the research expertise needed to overcome the challenges which will be encountered.
Charlotte O’Kelly, MD of TechWorks Marine said “Our joined ambition is to transform the way we monitor the coastal zone at a global level. We are bring together leading international experts in TechWorks Marine and Dublin City University, together we can make a big impact to Coastal Monitoring at a Global Level”.
The Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund is a €500 million fund established under Project Ireland 2040 and is run by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation with administrative support from Enterprise Ireland. It aims to progress “research priority areas” such as information and communications technology, energy, climate action, sustainability, services and business processes among other themes. Imelda Lambkin, Manager, Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund, Enterprise Ireland said: “On behalf of Enterprise Ireland, I wish to congratulate TechWorks Marine and the Dublin City University Water Institute on their Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund award.
The DTIF is highly competitive, funding ambitious SMEs and researchers to collaborate on the development of innovative technologies that have the potential to transform markets. This project is one of 27 proposals approved from more than 300 applications under the first call and is one of two funded in the research priority area of Energy, Climate Action and Sustainability. We look forward to working with the team and supporting them in their ambitions in this area.”
The DCU Water Institute will contribute research and development to the sensor hardware and communications development, to reduce costs and improve the long-term deployment capability of the sensor network. This activity follows on from a variety of work carried out in the university on sensor development for water quality. The Water Institute are leaders in the area of marine sensor development with multidisciplinary expertise in the next generation of water monitoring technology.
TechWorks Marine will lead the project as the commercial partners and will lead the stakeholder engagement and commercialisation aspects. The company, based in Dun Laoghaire, will integrate the sensors developed by the DCU Water Institute with its operational data analytics platform, CoastEye. TechWorks Marine have almost 20 years of experience in the provision of oceanographic equipment and world-class solutions to monitor the marine environment, in the private and public sectors both in Ireland and overseas.
