PLOCAN took part in Arduino Day – Gran Canaria organised in the Teachers’ Centre Gran Canaria. The objective of the event was to show the educational community and the general public the interest, advantages, ideas and potential of the Arduino platform both in the classroom and in society. The event was organised by Arduino Gran Canaria, a stable working group that was set up four years ago and which meets each week in the “Casa de la Cultura” in Cruce de Arinaga to study and practise with Arduino in a combination of theory and practise. This week’s meeting was attended by over 50 people, including teachers from Vocational Training, High-School Technology teachers and university lecturers from the areas of electrics and electronics, together with other people interested in robotics and free hardware.
PLOCAN technicians and scientists visited the Brazilian oceanographic vessel Vital de Oliveira during its stop-over in the port of La Luz y Las Palmas. This modern Brazilian ship, officially presented by the Brazilian Navy in July 2015, is the result of a co-operation agreement between Brazilian companies Petrobras S.A., Vale S. A. and the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.
The European H2020 COLUMBUS project, on-going since March 2015, and aimed at helping industry to capitalise on the most important and promising results of the marine R+D+i conducted by the European Union by facilitating their dissemination, access and comprehension to and by potential final users, industry and academe, has recently published a Good Practice Guide for use and sharing of marine observations and data by industry.
The main objective of this best practises guide is to raise awareness about the issues that prevent industry from participating in marine observatories and the associated initiatives for exchanging data by fostering a discussion between the compilers/suppliers of public data, the managers of data portals and users/suppliers from the private sector, and formulate possible solutions to overcome some of the barriers that, at the end of the day, would lead to a greater use and provision of marine data to and from industry.
PLOCAN has helped to prepare this guide, along with the partners of the Seascape Consultants Project; VLIZ (Marine Institute of Flanders), EuroGOOS (European Global Oceanic Observation System), Marine South East and SmartBay Ireland.
PLOCAN represented the European Smart and Networking UnderWAter Robots in Cooperation Meshes (SWARMS) project at the V International Ocean Business trade fair on oceanic observation technologies, held between the 4th and the 6th of April in the head offices of the National Oceanographic Centre (NOC) of the United Kingdom, in the city of Southampton.
A record number of visitors, five thousand, and exhibitors, four hundred, representing scientific-technical-based companies and institutions associated with the development, marketing and use of instrumentation and systems for oceanic observation, has celebrated the tenth anniversary of an event whose main objective is to showcase the latest advances in the sector with its permanent exhibition area and a full and varied programme of lectures, seminars, commercial presentations and demonstration sessions over three days.