Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AIMS (Automated Integrated Monitoring System)
Reporting period: 2017-05-01 to 2017-10-31
The current problems affecting the Environmental Monitoring market are the inadequate IT resources for marine data management and processing; the over-segmentation of the market in multiple solutions affecting the coherency of global assessments; and the use of unstandardized and/or black-box techniques preventing third-party quality check. AIMS resolves these problems by developing an integrated underwater marine data system including a network of data collection tools, a Big Data platform for data storage and processing, High Performance Computing technologies, and flexible Graphic Users Interfaces (GUI), providing clear environmental information and results available and accessible to a wide range of users worldwide.
AIMS therefore positions itself to be the reference platform for a performing and reliable decision and management framework in the Environmental Monitoring market. Thanks to these achievements, AIMS could substantially contribute to accelerate the production of scientific data and knowledge, particularly where important gaps still exist; it could democratize the use of current complex scientific methods, by widening the access to information. and hence supporting sustainable growth and job creation in the Blue Economy sector.
The project aims at assessing and comparing technological options for making the production chain operative, performant and fully automated. The business strategy supports its sustainability and market replication, to be further accomplished in Phase 2. At this stage, Phase 1, an analysis of key stakeholders, market size, competitive background and of threats/opportunities for entering the market has been performed. SINAY also had the objective of identifying the regulatory requirements of the product and setting up a strategy for the management of intellectual property rights (IPR) and for a Freedom to Operate analysis (FTO). Concerning the regulation, the main goal was understanding the constraints related to the use of data from marine open data platforms. Concerning the IPR and FTO, the objective was to understand how to best protect not only the whole solution, but also the different sub-divisions: data collection devices, software, processing algorithms, the connectors among each sub-division. Some of them may indeed be patented, while others appear to be better protected by copyrights. The protection of names and symbols (logo) of the solution in the marketplace is also assessed (trademark).
AIMS therefore positions itself to be the reference platform for a performing and reliable decision and management framework in the Environmental Monitoring market. Thanks to these achievements, AIMS could substantially contribute to accelerate the production of scientific data and knowledge, particularly where important gaps still exist; it could democratize the use of current complex scientific methods, by widening the access to information. and hence supporting sustainable growth and job creation in the Blue Economy sector.
The project aims at assessing and comparing technological options for making the production chain operative, performant and fully automated. The business strategy supports its sustainability and market replication, to be further accomplished in Phase 2. At this stage, Phase 1, an analysis of key stakeholders, market size, competitive background and of threats/opportunities for entering the market has been performed. SINAY also had the objective of identifying the regulatory requirements of the product and setting up a strategy for the management of intellectual property rights (IPR) and for a Freedom to Operate analysis (FTO). Concerning the regulation, the main goal was understanding the constraints related to the use of data from marine open data platforms. Concerning the IPR and FTO, the objective was to understand how to best protect not only the whole solution, but also the different sub-divisions: data collection devices, software, processing algorithms, the connectors among each sub-division. Some of them may indeed be patented, while others appear to be better protected by copyrights. The protection of names and symbols (logo) of the solution in the marketplace is also assessed (trademark).
A detailed business plan is elaborated for the introduction of innovative solution on the market, which includes the costs, the incomes, and the forecast of revenue until 2020. A technical analysis of exploitability of marine data from Open Data Platform is drawn. Main results are the low-level constraints for the re-use of available public data also for commercial purposes, the identification of future trends concerning data types and formats (i.e. what types and formats data will be available in the future from open data platforms), a technological option for the high-performance computing, the big data architecture, software, and algorithms. The certification scheme for data management within QSE and the IPR strategy have been assessed; FTO is ongoing on those portions of the solution potentially overlapping existing patents. The trademark will be registered for each AIMS as a whole, as well as for different sub-projects (i.e. packaged tools applied to specific maritime domains). The market research is based on the identification of priority areas, clients’ needs, potential beta-users, main competitors and their solution in economic and technological maturity. The assessment of the pricing and the value proposition were drawn and they are tested directly in the market. Our FS aims at accelerating the development and go-to-market. The AIMS technology will be able to handle complex computational situations, providing reliable forecasts as well as real-time visualisations. So, it accelerates the production of scientific data and knowledge and make accessible the information. AIMS is now much closer to the market, with better chances to attract the international interest and to succeed in its commercialization.
SINAY builds an international network aimed at realising the full commercialisation in the next three years. The successful project also gave us a much greater visibility and increased the credibility of the company in France and at the European level. Concerning socio-economic implications, the company is experiencing a rapid growth in both turnover and employment, whereby the personnel has almost doubled in 2017. Expected future results consist in a continuous improvement of the performance of the existing AIMS modules and in the full commercialisation of the solution.