The Fifth Call for Applications is now closed. A total of 17 full applications and nine applications for extension have been submitted to the Secretariat.

The Living North Sea project was officially unveiled at an exciting event in Flanders, Belgium on the 26th March 2010. Representation was present from across the beneficiary countries and from the European Commission. Delegates were able to witness first hand the shocking damage and mortality of fish at a land drainage pumping station. A representative of the Flemish Environment Minister released glass eel upstream of the pumping station, collected by the project partners, and pledged that the ministry would create an inventory of these pumping stations in Flanders, and a priority list based on their impact on fish before the end of the year. It was then pledged that 90% of priority fish passage sites would be made passable to fish by 2015. On the basis of support like this, the LNS project beneficiaries look forward to providing the information and support to solve these critical problems for migrating fish throughout the North Sea Region.

The Joint Annual Conference 2010 will take place 16-17 June in Stavanger, Norway. The event will be arranged jointly with the North Sea Commission and feature a more integrated conference than previous years.  

Troels Bruun Jørgensen is the new National Contact Point for Denmark. The change is effective immediately.

The NMU pilot on “Maritime Transport & the Environment” (MT&E) started on Wednesday, March 3rd with a one day face-to-face session at the campus of Kiel University of Applied Sciences, Germany. More than 30 apprentices of shipping agent and NMU stakeholder “Sartori & Berger” and others enrolled for this first test of the newly developed module that focuses on the environmental impacts of shipping.

What is a service list, what are the benefits and what are we doing in the Smart Cities project?

Relevant professionals are hereby invited to submit a quotation for a design contract for the North Sea Region Programme.

Relevant professionals are hereby invited to submit a quotation for a short term contract regarding the production of a number of videos / news reels including video diaries at the Annual Conference in June.

The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) on the Programme website has been revised and updated.

The fifth Call for Applications is now open. It will run until and including Wednesday 7 April.

Epractice, the EU portal for e-practitioners, just published the first Smart Cities research brief. Customer profiling is a practical, evidence-based approach to understanding who are the customers for each public sector service, the channels through which those customers can be served, and how these customers can best be targeted.

The revised Fact Sheets approved at Monitoring Committee No 5 are now available online. Changes have been made to Fact Sheet 2, 5, 7, 14 and 15.

On Wednesday 17th February 2010, NS FRITS hosted the fourth stakeholder seminar at the Golden Tulip hotel, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. All presentations are available on the NS FRITS website www.nsfrits.eu

The seminar looked at the varying ways of improving transport security transnationally and exploring the connection between transport security and NS FRITS.

Applicants are now able to access the application system to work on their online application for the 5th Call for Applications.

The Workgroup Maritime Logistics of Jacobs University Bremen has been developed an e-learning module element called “Ship Knowledge”. The e-learning course will run for five weeks starting from 8th March 2010. NMU Stakeholders and students from NMU partner universities are invited to participate in this course. The registration deadline is until 3rd March 2010.

Check our brand new video: Workshop on wireless services in Groningen, february 2010. Video featuring students Hanze University, Scandicall (E-Clic), Groningen and Kortrijk.

The Secretariat is looking for an experienced student to assist the Project Development and Communications Unit for six months, starting in April 2010 or as soon as possible thereafter.

The Secretariat has received 26 project ideas for pre-assessment in preparation for the upcoming Call for Applications. Feedback will be provided before the opening of the call.

Pre-assessment of project ideas in preparation for the upcoming fifth Call for Applications is now closed.