The Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) has awarded its 3rd CSIC Transfer and Entrepreneurship Awards, designed to recognise initiatives that bring scientific and technological knowledge closer to society and foster an entrepreneurial culture within the institution.

Among the winning projects is TWindPRED, led by Marcos Martínez Roig, a researcher at the Centre for Research on Desertification (CIDE, CSIC-UV-GVA) and affiliated with PTI-CLIMA, the CSIC’s Interdisciplinary Thematic Platform for Climate and Climate Services, which has received the award in the new Knowledge Transfer category.

The project is the result of a collaboration between CIDE’s Climate, Atmosphere and Ocean Laboratory (Climatoc-Lab), the University of Alicante’s Intelligent Tourism Laboratory (TI-LAB) and Torrevieja Town Council, alongside citizen science (Mastral Project), and focuses on the development of an artificial intelligence-based application for high-resolution (1-km) real-time wind monitoring and forecasting.

Thanks to a model trained using several years of data specific to the Torrevieja area, TWindPRED provides local forecasts with a spatial resolution of 1 km and hourly updates, designed to improve the management of water-based tourism, enhance safety through early warning systems, and support wind condition forecasting on the municipality’s beaches. This tool is integrated into Smart City platforms to enable efficient and sustainable municipal management.

The recognition highlights the value of scientific knowledge transfer as a strategic element for local decision-making, and demonstrates the potential of climate research to contribute to smart and sustainable tourism models, through the development of technological solutions with socio-economic and environmental impact.

With these awards, the CSIC reinforces its commitment to science that is connected to the local area, social challenges and collaboration between scientific institutions, universities and public administrations.

CIDE Communication