recently charted the Mexican and Brazilian
maritime markets. Another recent event
was the technology seminar in Stavanger in
Norway, arranged jointly with Finpro, with 21
Finnish maritime companies participating.”
Overall, the maritime industry in Fin-
photo: PORT OF HELSINKI LTD
”In the TRIMMI project, we have
land currently employs approximately 16 000
people and has a total annual turnover of
some 5.7 billion euros.
COMBINING ICT AND
MARITIME INNOVATIONS
The aim of another Finnish maritime promotion project MERIT Turku is to find ways
to strategically incorporate and utilise ICTrelated solutions in the maritime cluster, plus
to promote the role of maritime industry as a
forerunner in the utilisation of modern technologies.
Manager Juha Valtanen from Machine
Technology Center Turku Ltd. notes that
MERIT Turku is a sister project for the larger
Helsinki-based MERIT initiative.
”Both of these projects were started in
the autumn of 2014. For MERIT Turku, the
main financing was supplied by the Ministry of Employment and the Economy and the
City of Turku,” Valtanen explains.
”Other initiatives for combining maritime and ICT solutions for the export markets
have been ongoing since 2008, with a particular emphasis on the building and design
of cruise ships.” ICT technologies would be
helpful in various maritime mobile communications and positioning applications, as well
as in improving the ease of operation, safety
and environment-friendliness of a number
of technical devices in the maritime environment.
”This starting point has already become
a reality, pointing the way to the Smart Ship
project and various other tangible projects
with R&D emphasis,” mentions Valtanen.
”In MERIT Turku project, three new
maritime ICT innovation events have already
been scheduled to take place between the
autumn of 2015 and the spring of 2016.”
One of the main themes will be ’Augmented Reality’, aiming for the improved
illustration of maritime design schemes with
the aid of new ICT applications.
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