What exactly does Eyecon, and how many people work with the company?
At the moment, we have eight people collaborating. Our company is dedicated to data processing, transforming data obtained through sensors, and transforming it into useful information for its users. We use sensors that already exist and are available in satellites. For example, this allows us to provide data on soil deformation, buildings, or data related to the vegetation index. We also use other sensors that we install locally, allowing us to develop solutions for smart cities or solutions like the one we are developing for the county of Angra do Heroísmo: monitoring the streams’ flow. This project is called “the hydrological cycle management” of the county of Angra do Heroísmo. We will set up meteorological stations and sensors that measure the water’s height to calculate its flow at various points, allowing us to alert any obstructions or risk of flooding.
When will this application be available?
We expect to have it available within the deadline we’ve committed to, and now we have six months to develop this application. We are also developing another application in partnership with the European Space Agency. We’re creating an algorithm to identify and warn of the risk or the susceptibility of landslides, among other aspects. This algorithm integrates data from various sources, whether fixed or dynamic, such as satellites and precipitation data, which is relevant, that can be obtained by weather station sensors or by a weather data service. It allows us to develop an application, a tool that has several applications. And we have partners such as civil protection at the regional level and also municipal. On the other hand, it also benefits road construction planning, knowing the type of soil, the work cost, or road maintenance management. It allows us to see and monitor the deformation in the slopes and its vegetation index. It is an ambitious project, and we have a very short deadline to complete it. It must be ready in June this year. It has the collaboration of international experts in this area who are in Spain and Greece.
This application to prevent landslides is essential for a region that, as we know, goes through these problems cyclically.
For us, the Azores is the perfect lab for developing applications of this nature, and that’s why we proposed this project to ESA (European Space Agency). It is also of interest to several entities here in the Azores. Not only for Civil Protection but also for the Air Center itself, a stakeholder of this project. Here we have at our disposal an excellent laboratory for applications of this nature.
In your case, what led you to return to the region?
A family matter and the absolute clarity that we do have an advantage in our Azores’ location. The Azores are an excellent place to live and to develop this type of business. We are 4 hours from the east coast of the United States of America and 2 hours from the Iberian Peninsula. In the Azores, we are not in a periphery. We are, in fact, in the center of the world.
Should the Azores venture more on the impulse and the calling of companies of this kind?
I think the region is already supporting a lot of this kind of company. Many grants are indeed supporting everything that is tourism, agriculture, or the ocean, but, in fact, I think that the region already helps a lot in this field.
What projects do you and your company plan to develop this year?
2021 will be a challenging year for us because we have several projects in our hands that we have to develop and implement. This application for the detection of landslides must be ready in June and does not end there. The application will be available on that date. Still, we have to make a whole effort to develop sales and promote this application globally. So, this will require, in addition to the development aspect, also the business development portion of it. In the case of the project to monitor the streams’ hydrological cycle, the same will happen. We are developing it for the county of Angra do Heroísmo, but, of course, we will have all the interest to expand this solution to other counties in the Azores, for example, to the ones on São Miguel Island, which have a lot of problems with water. In addition to these, we have another project to develop until June, a smart parking system, also for the county of Angra do Heroísmo. 2021 will be a year full of implementations of projects that have been worked on for some time now.
About the smart parking project, how will it work? Can you explain it?
We want to help people park their cars in historical centers. We often spend a lot of time finding a street with a parking space. This application will give an idea of the parking spots available at city entrances. There will be no sensors by space and location as we have in the parking lots of shopping centers, for instance. We will use a traffic monitoring system by street and calculate the probability of parking through an algorithm. It will be almost like a 'word of mouth': go down this street that you will most likely find a place to park. It is a solution that is certainly more affordable than placing sensors for each parking space. Indeed, we will also develop a mobile app. This solution also reduces the carbon footprint by the time it often takes to park in historical centers. It has several advantages.
Is it possible to expand it to other cities?
Yes, for cities that have the same problem. If there’s any interest from another municipality in having this system, we are obviously open to conversation. We will promote this application in other cities, not only in Portugal but also abroad.
Any other future projects that you want to develop here in the Azores?
We are researching an area that interests us, mainly; remote detection of invasive algae in the ocean. The goal is to provide national or regional environmental entities with access to a tool that allows them, in real-time, to monitor blooming areas of invasive algae. It is a very ambitious project in which we are still validating the existing algorithms to detect algae in the ocean. If we are successful, as we hope, we then move on to its development, raising relevant stakeholders.
