Marine Knowledge Gate - The Key to Pandoras Box
The MarineTT project consortium (AquaTT & EurOcean) launched the online “Marine Knowledge Gate 1.0” on the 8th of March 2012. The innovative Marine Knowledge Gate aims to provide the European marine community with a one-stop-shop to a wealth of knowledge generated from marine focused research projects funded by the European Commission. Using advanced functionality and search facilities, the system is intended to enable transparency and accessility thereby making it easier for a variety of users to access relevant information easily. The launch of the Marine Knowledge Gate marks a significant milestone for the European Commission funded FP7 Support Action “MarineTT” (European Marine Research Knowledge Transfer and Uptake of Results). The Marine Knowledge Gate is accessible via the MarineTT website (http://www.marinett.eu/(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)). Conceptually, the system is innovative in that it not only contains a profile of each research project, but it also contains information about the “Knowledge Outputs” of the research activity in a non-technical language. In addition, the Marine Knowledge Gate also suggests potential users and applications of the knowledge outputs. In doing so, the Marine Knowledge Gate goes a significant step further down the innovation cycle by making it easier and faster for end-users to assess relevancy of research results and then connect with research consortia. “Europe is facing a lot of challenges in the current financial climate and many people see innovation through exploitation of pioneering research as a tool to help Europe become more competitive and sustainable. However, major challenges exist to realising the potential of research, such as inaccessibility to the knowledge outputs from research, lack of understanding of the applications of knowledge to different end-users, ineffective knowledge transfer and many more. The Marine Knowledge Gate is the first step in trying to address some of these challenges by creating a repository where hopefully in the future all “knowledge outputs” from public marine research can be stored.” David Murphy, MarineTT coordinator, AquaTT Manager. Over the course of 18 months the MarineTT consortium carried out a detailed analysis of information provided from coordinators of 148 marine research projects funded under the European Commission FP6 (2002-2006) and FP7 (2007-2013) research programmes. Marine Environmental Themes covered by the analysis included marine environmental management, energy, climate change, fisheries and aquaculture. All knowledge outputs have been validated by external experts representing industry, policy and the science community. The experts assisted in identifying relevant end-users and potential applications of the knowledge outputs. The end result is that the Marine Knowledge Gate contains almost 600 validated “Knowledge Outputs” searchable by project or programme, by knowledge type (prototype, scientific publication, book/review, case study, etc.), by potential end user (Education & Training, Environmental Managers & Monitoring, Industry, Policy/Decision Makers etc), Sectors to Benefit and availability of the knowledge output in the public domain. For instance, An Ocean energy SME looking for commercial opportunities can search for prototypes under the Ocean Energy sector. All relevant prototypes are listed with a basic description about the output along with contact details for the project coordinator. “The Marine Knowledge Gate is an upgrade of the existing EurOcean infobase on European funded projects that, through the MarineTT Project, has greatly improved the availability of information/ knowledge and made it more easily searchable to a broad spectrum of end users. This is a new innovative tool dedicated to transfer information on European marine research projects and their ‘Knowledge Outputs’. By providing open access to this information, the Marine Knowledge Gate promotes the market take-up of innovation and hence contributes to HORIZON 2020’s objectives”. EurOcean Executive Director, Telmo Carvalho The Marine Knowledge Gate responds to a need to realise the full potential of the outputs of marine research. “We need to get more innovation out of our research. Cooperation between the worlds of science and the world of business must be enhanced, obstacles removed and incentives put in place” Europe 2020 Flagship Initiative Innovation Union COM(2010) 546 final. The European Commission have highlighted the need for improved systems and methodologies for knowledge capture and transfer. MarineTT is paving the way by providing an innovative approach to knowledge capture, analysis and transfer which is vital for realising a more innovative Europe. The “Marine Knowledge Gate” is only one aspect of the work of the MarineTT project which aims to develop new methodologies, tools and insights that will help improve the transfer of knowledge to application resulting in tangible impact. This project also intends to take high potential “knowledge outputs” identified in the projects and carry out targeted and customised knowledge transfer to a variety of end-users (policy, industry and scientific community) and measure the uptake and impact. For more information visit www.marinett.eu For press queries, please contact: Maica Garriga, Science Officer, EurOcean, Lisbon, Portugal Tel: +351 21 392 4495 Email: Maica.Garriga@fct.mctes.pt The MarineTT project is funded by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (Coordination and Support Action, call FP7 ENV-2009-1) under grant agreement no. 244164. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the European Union cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
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