Cons.A.R. - Italian Shipowner's Research Consortium

The Ship-owners Research Consortium CONS.A.R was born in 1986 as Italian operative arm of the ship-operators in the research activity and of advanced services. Presently, Cons.A.R.'s primary mission is to join Confitarma ( Italian Federation of Indipendent Ship-owers) and the associated members to face the competitive challenge and to achieve the operative excellence of the associated shipping companies, by promoting their direct participation and involvement in the research activities.

In this context, the Cons.a.r.'s activity covers various aspect: from market research to design for maintenance, from management and organizational optimization of the vessel and services to the modern reliability systems, from "Motorways of the sea" to the Human factors studies, from the initiatives for supporting the Short Sea shipping to the development of intermodal logistic items, etc.

The principal organization aim is to encourage the direct participation of the shipping companies in the R&D activities. Other main aim is to disseminate the benefits onto the ship operators (Confitarma and associated members), through the capillary diffusion both of the promoted initiative and of the researchs' results.

The synergy produced thanks to the the combination of different specialized activities (research, services, training), as well as the competences acquired over the years, have made Cons.A.R successfully involved in many important European and national research projects.

Among the national projects carried out by the Cons. A.R., there can be mentioned several sectorial studies developed under many programmes financed by Italian Infrastructures and Transports Ministry to support the shipbuilding and shipping sectors, and the research in the maritime sector, in the "Extraordinary Development Programme of Maritime and River cabotage "and in the "Motorways of the sea and of the Short Sea Shipping"
Recently the Consar has realized an important enlargement of the activity field developing a "Feasibility study on direct intermodal links between Italy and Russian Federation" committed by ICE ( National Institute for Foreign Commerce)

These are the project in progress: ECOMOS, Industria 2015 and RITMARE

Among the projects financed by European Commission, whom Consar has given its contribution with representatives of European Companies, there can be mentioned some of the most important ones such as: MASIS I; MASIS II; RO-RO Safety Stability; COMARPROP; MERMAID; WETS; HARDER; ROROPROB; EURO-MTEC; VRSHIPS-ROPAX 2000; SEAROUTES; SAFECO.
Among the projects ended there have to be mentioned "EMAS-Ship", "SAFETOW" and particularly the "InMare" Coordination Action, where Cons. A.R is the leader and co-ordinator of a consortium composed by 20 members, among European ship-management companies, national and international universities and ship-owners' associations. Moreover, there has to be highlighted the "ACCESS" Project, led in the MARCO POLO programme finalized to the promotion of Motorways of the sea .

The integrated project FLAGSHIP, financed under the Sixth research European Framework Programme, has just been concluded.
Under development there are the following projects, founded under the FP7, which actively involve Cons.A.R.: AZIPILOT, RISPECT, ARIADNA, ECO-REFITEC. Besides that, Cons.A.R. is currently involved in the European Training project UniMET.