Innovation Central Perth and the National Energy Resource Australia (NERA) have formed a new partnership to benefit the energy sector by assisting industry develop and deploy sensor technology.
This will be used to diagnose problems and optimise efficiency in industrial processes, with the partnership including NERA providing funding to support the Wireless Industrial Sensor Environment (WISE) Program.
The program is a partnership between Innovation Central Perth a Cisco-led collaboration with Curtin University, Woodside and Data61, and a growing number of industry members to boost productivity and cost efficiencies across industry sectors by leading best practices for data management and the widespread deployment of wireless sensor technologies.
Cisco’s lead for co-innovation centres in Australia Tom Goerke said the WISE program gave members the opportunity to solve business challenges by providing the resources to collaborate and test Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technology.
“WISE offers a unique open collaboration format to its members, which includes a mix of industry and end-user organisations, technology providers, and research organisations,” he said.
“The program taps into a broad resource of expertise and talent from ICP’s partners and other WISE members, including from NERA, a member and project partner who collaborates right across the energy resources sector.”
NERA chief executive officer Miranda Taylor said the program would enable new technologies to be deployed at speed to assist industry address future challenges stemming from inspection and maintenance schedules, ageing infrastructure and other operational issues.
“With the emergence of technologies such as cloud computing, machine learning, artificial intelligence and big data, our sector has the opportunity to improve the operation and maintenance of assets by cost- effectively deploying IIoT technology,” she said.
“NERA is pleased to support the WISE Program and similar initiatives that can help streamline the adoption of innovative, cutting-edge solutions for the benefit of Australia’s energy resources sector and the broader economy, but also to leverage Australian innovation into global supply chains and create new value and job opportunities.”