BCThubs project was presented by AquaBioTech Group, during the European Ocean Days held in Brussels from 4-8 March 2024, during a week of events related to European maritime topics.
A BCThubs poster was displayed and presented during the day Where next for Europe’s Seas? which provided and harvested insights on what might be the collective pathways for Europe’s Marine Future. In essence, the question addressed was:
What, in this wider, evolving future landscape, might be the pathways for Europe’s Seas, with a perspective to 2050?
The BCThubs poster was presented as a project which aims to build in the participating Widening countries (i.e. Greece, Bulgaria and Malta), Blue Culture Technology Excellence Hubs, as permanent structures, supporting with new innovative solutions and products, the sustainable protection, restoration, valorisation, management, accessibility and promotion of Under Water Cultural Heritage (UWCH).
The main focus was on BCThubs R&I Solutions aiming to develop technology prototypes for supporting UW research work; for improving on-site and remote accessibility of UWCH; for safeguarding UWCH assets; for promoting health & safety of divers in UW missions including 4 main pillars:
- UW research supporting services/capabilities, Modelling & reconstruction of opto-acoustic seafloor DTMs/photomosaics integrating remote sensing, High resolution Electro-resistivity and Shallow water sediment coring.
- Services for improving on-site and remote accessibility including exploring VR for enabling remote accessibility to UWCH and augmented diving capability based on acoustic communication/localization.
- UWCH assets’ safeguarding services/capabilities covering the aspects 4D models & real-time streams, combined with AI-based comparative analysis for UWCH assets safeguarding.
- And finally the UW health & safety services/capabilities, Divers’ physiological monitoring, BLE multi-point communication, DRA.
A key feature of the day was the interactive discussions. Following the opening high-level, inspirational scene-setting plenary, there were thematic breakout sessions based around the following themes: Global drivers; Economy; Society; and Innovation, with guiding questions to structure the discussions. Each theme looked at opportunities, enablers, and barriers, as well as the interlinkages between the themes, with a shorter-term perspective to 2030 and more longer-term to 2050.
All the participants were divided into different rooms with their moderators, sharing their voices, experiences, best practices, and recommendations, which were collected and shared during the final session “Initial insights and takeaways”.
The conference outcomes will be highlighted in a final conference report, which will serve to identify main issues, as a starting point for further, more in-depth discussions and development at European level in a multifaceted and multidisciplinary approach.
