BLUE BOOST |Blue Hackathon on sustainable innovation to the sea held in Trieste

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On 18-19 June 2019, BLUE_BOOST project successfully held Blue Hackathon – the first “marathon” on sustainable innovation in the Blue Growth sector ever organised in Friuli Venezia Giulia.

Generally speaking, the goal of a hackathon is to unfold the potentials of professionals in fields linked to innovation with the aim of creating a functioning product, project or structured idea by the end of the event. Hackathons can include the programming language used, the operating system, an application. a wide range of professionals can be involved in a hackathon, including researchers, project managers, and domain experts.

In this case, the hackathon targeted the Blue economy sector with the scope of finding creative solutions for “innovation challenges” in the fields of Environment & Costal Protection, Smart Shipbuilding, Maritime Transport & Yachting Services. The event was preparatory to the BLUE_BOOST Call for Innovation Vouchers that is offering 350.000 EUR in the form of innovation vouchers to 35 selected SMEs and Start-Ups for implementing innovation projects together with a registered Knowledge Provider.

Read more about the event at the dedicated project website page.

THE PROJECT: BLUE_BOOST has the ambitious goal of unlocking the potential of maritime clusters along the shores of the Adriatic and Ionian region. The project will launch a transnational innovation voucher scheme aimed at granting 35 small-scale projects targeting the main sectors of the Blue growth. The project will boost new and existing networks in order to explore possible sectoral cross-fertilization, new ideas and alliances among the actors of the Blue Economy.

HARMONIA |Release of the HarmoNIA Data Access Portal: free and easy to use

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Pollution is the introduction of harmful contaminants that are above-threshold for a given ecosystem. Common man-made pollutants that reach the Seas include pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, oil, sewage and plastics. For instance, many of these pollutants are consumed by small marine organisms and introduced into the global food chain.

To respond to the overall goal of improving environmental risk assessement, HarmoNIA is getting one step closer to sharing harmonized data and information on marine contaminants in the Adriatic & Ionian Seas throught the newly-implemented Data Access Portal. The database, built on the EMODnet (European Marine Data Network) scientific approach, includes a collection of over of 1129 datasets on contaminants based in the ADRION area providing information on legacy pollutants such as heavy metals and hydrocarbons as well as on antifoulants, pesticides and biocides, polychlorinated biphenyls  and fertilizers. Information is available for all environmental matrices (seawater, sediment and biota).

To know more and access the portal, please click on the following link.

THE PROJECT: HarmoNIA sets up a transnational network of institutions adopting a joint data management system for contaminants in the marine environment. This process will improve monitoring harmonization and the assessment related to the risk of contaminant dispersion from different pollution sources. Look at project website to learn more.

QNeST |Adriatic Ionian Quality Tourism Workshop, Expo and Routes of QNeST Project

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Great success for the Adriatic Ionian Quality Tourism Workshop, Expo and Routes of QNeST Project – held last 27 June in Lecce.

Stakeholders working for the promotion of tourism from different countries and regions (Puglia, Marche, Veneto, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Greece) had the opportunity to meet each other and to exchange information. They shared a common vision for a sustainable ad quality tourism in the Adriatic Ionian Macro Region and co-designed potential routes and transnational itineraries based on themes such as water, olive oil and wine, stones and travellers, merchants and pilgrims. All the itineraries pay attention to the project drivers: valorization of cultural heritage and preservation of an environmental sustainability, promotion and strenghtening of social well-being and accessible services, valorization of the mediterranean diet.

Take a look at the full article and the event video at the project webpage