Discover the people behind FLOATFARM in our interview series!
Meet Guilherme Beleza Vaz from blueOASIS with 5 questions and answers about the project goals, challenges and expected impact.
Could you briefly introduce blueOASIS and its core mission?
BlueOASIS (www.blueoasis.pt) is a Portuguese R&D startup fostering the development of ground-breaking Offshore Maritime and Naval Structures, Renewable Energy Systems, Underwater Acoustics solutions using modern Industry 4.0 approaches, such as Numerical Modelling, CFD, High-Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence tools. It is formed by a young multicultural team with experience on Aerospace, Mechanical, Naval, Maritime Engineering, AI experts and Environmental Impact issues. Their tools, programming expertise, CFD, AI skills and HPC knowledge/facilities (they have more than 40000 computing-cores of HPC power spread around Europe) makes them an asset for any Ocean Sustainability, Underwater Security and Defense project, and a unique company in Portugal.
What role does blueOASIS play in the FLOATFARM project? How does FLOATFARM align with blueOASIS’s long-term goals and areas of expertise?
In FLOATFARM blueOASIS deals with the modelling of the complete acoustic footprint of a floating wind turbine. Aerodynamics, Structural, Hydrodynamics noise and its propagation under water is simulated, and validated, in detail. Also, we will help the Ecologists to use the estimated acoustics noise sources to check its impact in the trophic chains of the Sea areas where the turbines will be installed.
You just released the Raindrop Tool, can you tell us more about its use whitin FLOATFARM?
RAINDROP (https://blueoasis.pt/raindrop/) tool permits to model the underwater propagation of multiple noise sources. It can now model ships, wind turbines and background noise sources. It considers the detailed bathymetry, water temperature and density, bottom acoustic impedances, and any medium property variation. Soon we will make RAINDROP open-source for the complete world!
From your perspective as a SME founder, what do you find most valuable about participating in EU-funded collaborative projects like FLOATFARM?
Building knowledge, building partner relationships, market our skills and managing to fund R&D work, otherwise impossible to be done in a startup context.
As a company working in offshore and oceanic innovation, what opportunities and challenges do you see for emerging players in this sector?
Out-of-the-box mentally is normally more in the spirit of an SME or Startup than in a large established company, institute or University. Innovation is the playing field of smaller companies. Also, its agility to change, in the current world where Ocean Sustainability and Security are the hot topics, is paramount. These are opportunities. For challenges, I reckon that the seeking of R&D funds to advance the disruptive ideas is more complicated for SMEs, within EU. But even that is changing, since SMEs are the economic engine of Europe.
