The Atlantic International Research Center – AIR CENTER (Centro Internacional de Investigação dos Açores) was established on November 20 in Brazil, through the signing of the Declaration of Florianopolis, which counts with INESC TEC and INESC P&D Brazil as signatory parties.
Promoted by the Ministry of Science of Portugal, this declaration results from an international effort that has gathered, in the signature of the same document, a series of representatives of the governments of Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, Nigeria, South Africa, Uruguay, Argentina, in addition of having India as an observer.
The Air Center will have as fundamental goals the creation of jobs and the collaboration for a sustainable environmental future, namely through a role of monitoring of climate changes and its effects, with focus at the Atlantic zone.
The new multinational laboratory, which will have facilities in the Azores island but that intends to take advantage of infrastructures and human means spread across many parts of the planet, intends to apply satellites to the submarine robotics in order to collect and analyze information from the Atlantic zone, dedicated to areas such as safety, aquaculture and fishing, biodiversity preservation, including urban ordaining.
Besides INESC TEC and INESC P&D Brazil, this project has the support from the following institutions: UROcean, PLCAN, Barcelona Super Computing Centre CEiiA, Univeristy of Texas in Austin, University of Cape Verde, Marine Institute of Ireland, SINTEF, WavEc, Azores RAEGE Association, Institute of Biodiversity and Spanish Institute of Oceanography. Among the technology companies associated to the project, there are Elecnor Deimos, Thales, EDP Inovation, Lusospace and Tekever.
The Air Center has, for now, already eight founding countries, which are Portugal, Brazil, Spain, Angola, Cape Verde, Nigeria, Uruguay, Saint Thomé and Prince, together with the regional government of Azores, and having United Kingdom, South Africa and India as observers. In the future, it is expected that more countries may integrate this structure.