From craft beers to smart sensors that signal long queues or road accidents, continuing with smart barriers to ending up with tools to ensure safe landing for air rescue. These are the areas in which, using funds from the European Regional Development Fund (Por Fesr) 2014-2020 Sardegna Ricerche, the research agency of the Region, has provided support to 550 companies and economic support by financing projects for a total of 98 million euros. «The management of the Por-Fesr funds is a very complex activity that we engage in every day – says Maria Assunta Serra, general manager of Sardegna Ricerche -. It’s not just a question of financing practices, but of following projects from idea to implementation. Our support is constant: we make the knowledge of our professionals, as well as laboratories and structures, available to companies and public administrations. We also offer support on the bureaucratic front for the management of non-simple reporting. We are organizing ourselves to better face the challenges that will come from the new Por-Fesr 2021-27 funds”.
More in detail: over 23 million euros have been invested to “support and enhance” the economy and innovation of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises and for activities operating in the tourism sector. With almost 15 million euros, instead, collaborative activities between public bodies, universities and consortium companies have been financed towards an objective of innovation. Almost 8 million euros have been invested in projects that manage to give technological answers to the needs of public administrations that cannot find solutions on the market such as intelligent street lamps to improve traffic which, through sensors connected to the municipal police station, signal long queues or road accidents, allowing for targeted intervention by the police. Then the smart barriers to protect the Nora lagoon. In addition, a system to guarantee safe flight and landing for the air rescue even in adverse weather conditions. Over 40 million euros have been used in complex projects: agro-industry, aerospace, ICT, biomedicine, bioeconomy and smart grids which have given rise to multiple programmes: from the use of satellites in agriculture to green boating, from the collection of big data in city up to zero impact construction.
Among the funded projects are those born to rethink tourism in a sustainable and collaborative key with business networks that have given life to cycle-paths linked to archeology, experiential holidays or astro-tourism which aims to make known the beauty of the starry sky of Sardinia free from light pollution. To these are added all the studies developed during the pandemic precisely to combat Covid-19 such as virus repellent materials, tools for rapid positivity detections and the anti-virus nasal spray. Other interventions in support of start-ups include those for the smart manhole capable of preventing floods, eco-leather for high fashion made with cork processing waste or the app that encourages healthy lifestyles .