Context/background of the projectNAFTES was based on an innovative idea at developing a holistic Naval Fire Fighting Training and Education System (NAFTES) to complement existing training infrastructure available in a special Unit of the HMOD (Hellenic Navy, Naval Training Command). The innovative aspect of the project was the development of specialized content, currently missing by the training and content market, but highly demanded from the naval industry, i.e., content for training crew members and staff of engineering premises on facing effectively fire situations. In addition, the business aspect of the project was to highly increase the training capacity of the Damage Control School, in order to meet the challenges and needs of modern maritime businesses. Finally, the technological innovation was the integration of Augmented Reality (AR) technologies, interfaces and equipment, for on-site training, enhancing NAFTES drills and exercises. ObjectivesThe NAFTES project aiming at enhancing the quality of the training of ships crews, both military and commercial ones, on firefighting operations. The training is provided through an on-line platform, called NAFTES Etraining, which includes the use of rich media content, interactive content, innovative tools, mobile apps and AR (Augmented Reality) applications. Participating organizationsThe partnership comprises a multi-disciplinary team of four partners: naval firefighting experts from both navy (HMOD) and commercial shipping (DANAOS), education and pedagogic expert partners as well as ICT and multimedia specialists (GUnet, IES).ImpactThe ability to train crews and officers on a vessel stationed away from relevant premises or on board is will have a positive impact in the shipping businesses and in this sense it will have a broader international effect and impact. The Initial Training of a crew combined with traditional drills, and the completion of the training at a later time at the crew's convenience will only have a positive effect. At the same time the use of cutting edge technology such as AR prepares the crew, both mentally and physically, to achieve better fire-fighting skills and techniques. The efficiency in dealing with similar crisis situations onboard is of paramount importance for all participating countries (e.g., Greece, Cyprus and Italy) where the maritime industry is a key asset.Results The most important results of the project are the following: - The User Requirements Report (Output 1) made clear the need for onboard training, teleconference facilities, more AR Scenarios, in addition to the online blended firefighting training. The report includes analysis and discussions on the current state of art, good practices, pedagogical approaches, and the needs of the target groups. The main results had a major impact in the way that NAFTES was designed. - The NAFTES Fire Fighting Toolbox (Output 2), aimed at developing original, high quality and interactive educational materials for NAFTES Firefighting Training that follow the requirements and the standards of both adult and vocational training. It includes: a) the NAFTES Fire Fighting Training Curriculum an outline of the two different levels of Fire Fighting Training – A. Basic Firefighting, B. Advanced Firefighting, b) Course modules design and development of all training materials, c) Video shooting complete firefighting scenarios into the Fire Simulator in the HN Damage Control School and d) Translations into partners’ languages: en, it, el.- The NAFTES eTraining Platform and AR Application (Output 3) supports the delivery of all materials of the project and make online interactive tools such as teleconference, online synchronous and asynchronous communication, interactive modules, self-assessment exercises, etc. All educational materials are also presented open to the public through the NAFTES Open Digital library. Additionally, the NAFTES Etraining platform support the content downloading and its offline usage (without the need of Internet) supporting onboard training.- NAFTES Mobile Etraining application is a native app that provides an alternative means of accessing the materials hosted in the NAFTES Etraining platform and can be used as a virtual information and learning environment as well as for disseminating the project results. - NAFTES Firefighting AR Apps is one of the most important innovations introduced by the project and can be used as a tool for acquiring knowledge, motivating and encouraging trainees. At the NAFTES application only one AR App for Hololens Glasses was promised, but finally 3 different AR application for mobile devices and 3 for Hololens glasses were developed.Longer-term benefitsNAFTES is expected to increase significantly the training capacity of the Damage Control School and can be considered as a stable basis for building new training activities for ship crews and for the personnel of any kind of engineering premises.

Marine biofouling has a tremendous economic and environmental impact; it can lead to >€1m in lost revenue per ship per year in fuel overconsumption alone. The International Maritime Organization estimates that gas emissions may increase between 38% and 72% by 2020, unless corrective measures are taken. The only way to mitigate biofouling is to detect it at an early stage (Level of Fouling – LoF 1), while it can still be cleaned with soft methods that do not damage hull paint or coating. With current approaches this is impossible, particularly within port waters as they are heavily turbid and inhibit visibility. Inspections outside port waters induce charter-off time that costs >€20k per day and are thus avoided by ship operators. SleekShip comprises a Semi-Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (SAUV) carrying a hyperspectral camera that captures light wavelength bands where light backscattering is less and the slime is easier to distinguish despite contamination. The inspection can take place in port waters while the ship is docked for other operations thus no additional charter-off time is incurred. An integrated cavitation-based cleaning tool allows for 100% paint-safe cleaning. By detecting biofouling early, ship owners will be able to achieve >€1.3m savings per vessel annually by reducing fuel overconsumption and paint/coating damage caused by hard-brush cleaning. Our consortium comprises SubseaTech, a dynamic manufacturer of underwater robots, QCELL, a high-tech SME specialising in hyperspectral imaging, M.Danchor a leading cleaning and inspection services company, TWI, the global leader in image-based underwater inspection technologies and Danaos, a NYSE-listed containership owner. Through SleekShip we aim to achieve sales of €41m, generating €17.9m profits and >110 jobs while helping the shipping industry save €3.4bn per year and reduce CO2 emissions by 115m tonnes over the 5 years after market launch. The Net Present Value ROI is 4:1 on EC funds with a grant.

CoPropel puts forth a holistic approach towards the realisation of marine propellers made of advanced composite materials. Compared to their traditional counterparts, marine composite propellers offer efficiency gains in propulsion efficiency, noise reduction and weight savings. The CoPropel project will see an interdisciplinary team of experts drawn both from research and industry, from theoretical considerations and numerical modelling to precision manufacturing - assembly and experimental verification testing. The CoPropel action brings together 9 organisations from 5 countries: 4 Research Institutes – TWI, University of Ioannina, Brunel University London and The Bulgarian Ship Hydrodynamics Centre; 4 Industrial partners – Loiretech, MECA, Danaos and Glafcos Marine with one certification body Bureau Veritas Marine & Offshore. Together, we will develop and bring to market a marine composite propeller with an embedded structural health monitoring system. The proposed activities will mature our Technology Readiness Level to 5-6 and drastically de-risk the integration of the investigated solutions on future products, effectively resulting in reducing the direct operating costs for the operators while minimising the environmental impact. Existing work by the partners has shown an approximate 12% reduction in energy consumption and subsequent fuel consumption, with the potential savings exceeding 15% at full-scale marine vessel propellers, which will be investigated and confirmed during our real-time sea trials as part of the CoPropel project.

SmartShip aims to bring together Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) of focused Universities, Research Institutions and Companies oriented into the maritime sector in order to build a holistic integrated ICT-based framework for the sustainable, individualized and completely automated energy management of ships. To accomplish this, it will take advantage of all the know-how that the consortium brings to the project referring to ICT technologies such as Data Analytics, IoT exploitation, DSS use, visualization tools, optimization algorithms and tools and Circular Economy approach methods. Smartship aims to offer a multi-layer optimization in the fields of fuel consumption, energy efficiency and emissions control management, in full respect to the implementation of the requirements of maritime sector regulations and taking into account applications of circular economy concepts in the maritime as well. Knowledge exchange between the partners that are already involved in the maritime sector, the ICT technology industry partners and the academia partners is one of the major Smartship’s objectives and will be materialised through corresponding secondments during the whole project’s timeplan. These synergies aim to build stronger collaboration relationships between the partners with respect to their future exploitation beyond Smartship project. Summing up Smartship will capitalise on available COTS technologies and will deliver an ICT & IoT-enabled holistic cloud-based maritime performance & monitoring system, for the entire lifecycle of a ship, aimed to optimise energy efficiency, emissions reduction and fuel consumption, whist introducing circular economy concepts in the maritime field.

SafeNav’s ambition is to develop and test a highly innovative digital collision prevention solution that will significantly reduce the probability of collisions, impact damage, grounding, and contribute to safer navigation by a) faster reliable real-time detection of a variety of obstacles (other vessels, fixed installations, submerged/semi-submerged objects, and marine mammals) in the marine environment, using data from state-of-the-art sensors and other relevant sources, and b) effective visual representation of the multi-source data to the navigators for quick COLREG-based decision-making support. To this end, SafeNav unites 10 key partners from the maritime industry and academia, including renowned SMEs, R&D institutes and universities to address the ‘Navigational Accidents’ aspect of the work programme . We will design collision avoidance algorithms built on multi-sensory data input from propriety (LADARTM sensor suite) and off-the-shelf sensors already installed on vessels, extensive statistics of navigational accidents, and other sources (AIS and route exchange services) to create a holistic decision support system (DSS). Processed information from the automatic DSS will feed into SafeNav collision-avoidance algorithms and generate real-time COLREGs-compliant suggestions for the navigator when an obstacle is detected. This reduces pressure on navigators onboard, providing them with efficient decision-making aid and access to visual navigation data on a single graphical user-interface. Sensors will also be used for container tracking, and mathematical models will predict container drift trajectory, transmitting collected data to a SafeNav Navigational Hazard Database available to nearby vessels/stakeholders, facilitating the recovery of lost containers. Moreover, we propose to prevent vessel collisions with cetaceans with optimal-tuned pingers to alert them of an approaching vessels.