e-Maritime: An Enabling Framework for Knowledge Transfer and Innovative Information Services Development Across the Waterborne Transport Sector

The economic and social impact of the waterborne sectors in Europe cannot be overstated, employing directly more than 3 million people and generating a turnover of about €250 billion representing more than 1% of the EU’s GDP. In order to maintain its leadership and competitiveness, Europe must take advantage of new market opportunities and address these challenges by means of focused research, development and innovation. In recent years the impact of digital technology and relevance of geospatial information has been increasingly felt across the whole maritime community bridging waterborne and coastal activities. The challenge for the maritime and marine science communities is to accelerate the transformation of the maritime sector into one that is able to exploit market-led opportunities and create high value added outputs that fully embraces technological and scientific advances. e-Maritime offers itself as the enabling framework.