Plocan : National facility for undewater vehicles, instruments and machines (vimas)

The Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (PLOCAN) is a multi-purpose service facility composed by a set of large infrastructures to support research, technology and innovation in the marine and maritime sector in the North-East Central-Atlantic Ocean.PLOCAN's mission is to promote long-term observations and sustainability of the ocean.It aims to make contributions to these goals through multidisciplinary approaches, clustered expertise and cost-effective combined services, including observatories, test beds, a base for underwater vehicles, an innovation hub, and training as common element.Built by a consortium between regional and national Spanish governments, the target users are not confined within Spain's borders being international partnerships crucial to its success.The end-users should likely be groups, from both public and private sectors, and it is intended to attract international research programs and networks, academia and government.The consortium will share the cost (€50 million) for the next decade, so putting it on a sound financial footing from the start.The project was approved in 2007 as a node of the Spanish Network of Large Scientific and Technological Infrastructure (ICTS) and further supported by the Ingenio 2010 Program(1) .The project is at this moment in time at the tendering stage for building and fixing infrastructures, which are scheduled for 2011.PLOCAN's operational phase is planned to start in 2012, although scientific and research activities are already taking place.PLOCAN infrastructures are based on a set of experimental facilities and laboratories on land; an offshore platform located at the edge of the continental shelf; and deep observation sites, some of them connected via cable.