Background

UK The Italian maritime cluster represents for Italy an important economic sector contributing to 2.6% of national GDP, 11% of production in the industry of transport, and using almost 1% of the units of work identified in the country, share as high as 2% including the impact of upstream and downstream, for a total of around 480,000 employees (Cluster and maritime development in Italy and in the regions CENSIS – September 2011). In the European scenario Italy keeps the 1st place in Europe in terms of imports across the sea (185.4 million tonnes of freight), and the 3rd in terms of exports (47 million – not far from Germany and the Netherlands). Moreover Italy is in the first place in the passenger transport sector with 6.7 million people as a base and cruise destinations.

RITMARE Flagship Project is one of the National Research Programmes funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research. It is the leading national marine research project for the period 2012-2016; the overall project budget amount to 250 million euros, co-funded by public and private resources. It is is coordinated by the National Research Council and involves an integrated effort of most of the scientific community working on marine and maritime issues, as well as some major industrial groups.
Ritmare is divided into seven sub-projects: maritime technologies for the development and construction of a demonstration vessel, technologies for sustainable fishing, planning of the maritime space in coastal waters, planning of the deep marine environment and the open sea, observation system for the marine mediterranean environment, research, training and dissemination structures, interoperable infrastructure for the observation network and marine data.

Purpose

To support integrated policies for the safeguard of the environment (the health of the sea); to enable sustainable use of resources (the sea as a system of production); to implement a strategy of prevention and mitigation of natural impacts (the sea as a risk factor).

Results

The objective of RITMARE is to implement what is suggested in the Blue Paper in terms of research and innovation, by means of a national programme of scientific and technological marine research.
More specifically, RITMARE has been structured around the following three objectives:

• to support integrated policies for the safeguard of the environment (the health of the sea);
• to enable sustainable use of resources (the sea as a system of production);
• to implement a strategy of prevention and mitigation of natural impacts (the sea as a risk factor).
• to increase synergies between those Research Bodies and University Consortia that are involved in marine research, facilitating the emergence of excellence and promoting cooperation;
• to strengthen cooperation between the world of research and Italian Industry in two complementary directions: inducing the research community to respond to the needs of industry and encouraging the latter to contribute to a relaunch of the technologies available to marine researchers. This will enable the creation of a new generation of researchers, specifically by means of industry-research joint doctorates;
• to enhance Italian participation in European projects and initiatives, increasing the number of Italian scientists appointed as project coordinators and promoting participation in joint programmes (e.g. JPIs) where the resources made available by the participants are matched by contributions from the EU.

The objective over the five years is to set up a system for maritime research that is more internally cohesive, better coordinated with the international scientific community and more in tune with Italy’s economic and industrial players.