Published on: 28 October 2020
Within the Solent Maritime Enterprise Zone (MEZ) there has been a drive to identify high performance opportunities, to help prepare the ground for future maritime innovation funding calls, for which the ‘Connected and Autonomous Maritime’ domain has been identified.
Dr Louise Butt, from South Coast Centre of Excellence for Satellite Application, has very kindly offered to facilitate a ‘SPARK session’ through the Satellite catapult.
This session will take place in the first week of December, consisting of a one-day session, possibly running with two, two-hour sessions.
In order to prepare for this, certain information is needed before the session can run. This information must be collected by Thursday 5 November.
On behalf of Capt. Allan Your RN and Dr. Louise Butt:
We have met with the Satellite Applications Catapult and we propose to conduct a facilitated, 'no cost to you', SPARK session. The session will aim to identify what a ‘Connected and Autonomous Maritime’ (we have previously referred to this as ‘5G Maritime’) landscape could offer our regional business community. We need to gather some information prior to the session for the facilitators. This information is particularly important to help identify what this means to you and your businesses before we can progress to determining Use Cases and to develop a business case to submit for funding either via calls or other means. The aim is to look at all maritime domains - defence, ports, ferries, leisure craft, hovercraft, etc.
For this process to start please can you provide responses to the following questions:
- What does ‘Connected and Autonomous Maritime’ mean to your business?
- What technologies do you associate with the term ‘Connected and Autonomous Maritime’?
- What are your top 3 problems that 'Connected and Autonomous Maritime' could help you solve?
- Which maritime domain/s are most likely to benefit?
- Which maritime domain/s are most likely to be early adopters?
- Have, or are you, considering investing in 'Connected and Autonomous Maritime'?
- What could your business do differently if you were able to fully embrace the concept of 'Connected and Autonomous Maritime'?
The output focus for the SPARK session will be on the opportunity for the region, the challenges it seeks to address and a roadmap to deliver a coherent solution including use cases.
A report will be generated, and follow-on sessions are likely as we develop an exciting proposal that we can take forward together as a region. The meeting will take place at the beginning of December so that we can meet the timelines for new calls in the spring.
Please send responses to the above questions to Jess Manson via Jessica.manson106@mod.gov.uk by Thursday 5 November.