Research & Innovation

AQUARING addressed the cultural/scientific sector of marine and aquatic sciences with the aim at setting up a comprehensive digital content collection to integrate and harmonise original contents provided by science centres, natural history museums and aquariums in Europe.

Advanced semantic web technologies supported the creation of a unified access portal to a distributed content collection thus improving access to and use of a large content base which was otherwise hidden and difficult to exploit.

AQUARING addressed the cultural/scientific sector of marine and aquatic sciences involving science centres, natural history museums and aquariums in Europe.

The aim was to improve access to and use of the largely distributed collections of digital contents on all different and complementary aspects of the subject, enhance their impacts on the visitors, increase public awareness and the learning process thereof.

Particularly, the project looked at the large cultural heritage of knowledge and information on aquatic environment available from major European organisations, with emphasis on the relevant themes of environment preservation and sustainable management.

COSTA EDUTAINMENT S.p.A. - Acquario di Genova (IT)

Stichting Koninklijke Rotterdamse Diergaarde (NL)

TECNALIA Robotiker (ES)

Lietuvos Juru Muziejus (LT)

Università Degli Studi Di Genova, DISA (IT)

Softeco Sismat (IT)

Societe D'Exploitation Du Centre National De La Mer (FR)

Association Europeenne Des Expositions Scientifiques, Techniques Et Industrielles (BE)

Institut Royal Des Sciences Naturelles De Belgique (BE)

The project set up a global digital collection space with a number of important benefits:

• adding value to the individual collections by integration of distributed contents;
• encouraging the development of a global view of and a unified access to the European heritage in the domain;
• strengthening the cultural and scientific offer of European aquariums, science centres and natural history museums thanks to the networked contents and the capability of offering combined experiences to visitors;
• allowing visitors to explore a virtual global knowledge space according to their interests and needs, to plan and combine investigations and learning routes across the different participating centres;
• supporting improved education and informal learning experiences;
• increasing communications to and awareness of the public at large on aquatic environment conservation and sustainable management of aquatic resources.

Gianni Viano

Stefano Bianchi