Source: Fuerteventura Technological Park
The President of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo; and the President of the Fuerteventura Council, Lola García; have signed today, Tuesday, February 13, a contract with the joint venture Telespazio Iberica SLU Pegasus Aviación SA, amounting to 22 million euros, with the aim of developing innovative solutions for the protection of biodiversity and forest fire management, from the analysis of data and images obtained from unmanned aircraft flights.
Clavijo highlighted the commitment of the Government of the Canary Islands to promote technological development in the eight Canary Islands, "and the project being developed by Fuerteventura, which incorporates this joint venture, attests that also from the non-capital islands, or more linked to tourism, you can take advantage of what nature and technology offers us to respond to the demands of citizens and ensure economic development and the generation of quality employment.
In this sense, he emphasized "that this type of project puts state-of-the-art technology at the service of people, in an initiative that will have an impact beyond our borders, and will lead us towards a better and safer model of society".
On the other hand, Clavijo wanted to highlight the economic and financial stability that public institutions have given to the Canarias Geo Innovation project, which encompasses all these initiatives, especially the Technology Park of Fuerteventura, with Eduardo Pereira at the helm, and the Canary Islands Innovation Agency, which was owned by the current Minister of Territorial Policy, Manolo Miranda.
Welcoming this commitment, the president insisted "on the convenience of continuing to open up possibilities for public-private collaboration, such as the one ratified today, because they guarantee the viability of the projects, seeking solutions to complex problems and obtaining economic benefits for them, which guarantees their viability and continuity over time".
For her part, the president of the Cabildo of Fuerteventura, Lola Garcia, "with the signing of this contract we give a considerable boost to what will probably be the first European center of its kind, aimed at innovative solutions to improve services provided to citizens, the protection of biodiversity, security and emergencies".
The island president stressed the involvement of the Cabildo in the Canarias Geo Innovation program, with a significant contribution of funds of more than 42 million euros. "A clear commitment that we make from the Cabildo for the generation of quality employment, training to attract and retain talent, as well as new opportunities for our SMEs". Lola García detailed that "we have already achieved important milestones such as the construction of the Canary Islands Stratoport for Haps, already completed, and the ISSEC multipurpose building that will be inaugurated, foreseeably next June".
ISSEC is a center for the creation, development, validation, certification and flight command and control operations of innovative security, emergency and biodiversity solutions (forest fires, natural parks, marine pollution, public heritage, among other areas) using Data Analytics from data obtained from sensors onboard unmanned platforms.
This project is part of Canarias Geo Innovation 2030, an innovation program of the Government of the Canary Islands and the Cabildo of Fuerteventura for Earth observation and communications with the aim of improving public services.
During the first half of 2024, the flight operations runway, which will be the largest in Spain, and the new multipurpose building will be inaugurated, while the first flights and missions are scheduled for the last four months of the year.
The operations runway (Canarias Stratoport for HAPS & UAS) is an infrastructure intended to enable the development, testing and operation of HAPS (high-altitude, long-endurance pseudo-satellites) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAS), i.e. high-altitude drones with several hours of flight autonomy. The first phase of the project has a budget of 11 million euros.
The multipurpose building, with a budget of 10 million euros, from which flight tracking, mission control and analysis will be carried out and evaluated, occupies a space of 2,700 square meters and will be inaugurated in June. It will have flight control rooms, simulators, training and instruction (Canarias Geo Training Center), mission and data analysis, communications and an ideas laboratory (Canarias GeoLab), for which a budget of 10 million euros is available.
These initiatives will contribute to the generation of quality employment, the attraction of multinational companies and, above all, will allow an important leap in Earth observation with the development of new solutions in strategic areas such as the fight against climate change, ocean conservation, monitoring of forest fires, emergencies, control of natural spaces and security, among others.