Project PO ACORES 2020-2015-eAZFlora

The European Strategy 2020 and the European Commission's 2010 proposal to unify innovation were contextualized for the Azores by the RIS3 strategy. Considering the three priority areas defined for the Azores, the eAZFlora project is in line with the European guidelines for innovation in what corresponds to the regional priority area of ​​tourism.

The main objectives of the project are:

1) Develop the first Flora of the Azores based on revised and updated taxonomic data;

2) Reviewing rate doubtful through morphological and molecular analyses;

3) Develop an electronic database to store flora contents, which will be available to the public through an online interface - eAZFlora Platform;

4) Develop a program for smartphones and tablets (app) that will interact with Flora's database – eAZFlora application.

5) Increase Scientific Production of Quality and Oriented to Intelligent Specialization.

Several recent studies carried out at the morphological and molecular level have shown the existence of a surprising amount of new species, subspecies and previously unknown varieties in the Azores archipelago. These and other additions to the Azorean flora have been published in specialist magazines, which are not generally accessible to the general public, and a true Flora of the Azores has never been produced to date.

The Azores are becoming a choice for tourists who want to experience a holiday in nature. A primary source of interest for nature tourism in the Azores is related to its flora. People are often curious about the plants they encounter when visiting natural areas and gardens, but they lack the botanical knowledge to identify them. Some computer applications were developed in several areas using image capture for content recognition. In botany, this is of great interest, since it makes the identification of plants an easy task for non-botanists, and also presents an enormous educational potential.

With the eAZFlora project we propose to combine the scientific interest of developing the first Flora of the Azores with the tourist and educational value of making this scientific knowledge available to non-specialists through the use of devices and state-of-the-art image recognition application programming.

At the end of the project we hope to have produced scientific content that will feed a personalized website - eAZFlora Platform - and a mobile application developed specifically for the project and that will make plant identification accessible for non-botanical users, thus increasing the tourist potential of the flora of the Azores and the main gardens of the archipelago.

Additionally, the project will allow advanced training of researchers, publications in international journals and communications at scientific meetings, with the organization of a meeting open to the general public and potential stakeholders where the results of the project will be announced.