Chief Scientist
- Bergen
maho@norceresearch.no
+47 920 54 529
SFI Smart Ocean
Foto: Ingvar Henne, NORCE/SFI Smart Ocean
Sustainable management of Norwegian ocean resources, safe operations of underwater installations, and good co-existence of the ocean industries require better data and knowledge-based decisions. Currently, most measurements in the ocean, in the coastal areas and fjords are carried out from ships, drifting buoys and sometimes from submerged buoy and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). There is however a major lack of cost-effective real-time and long-term measurements from stationary and smart sensors, which can enable more systematic monitoring of important parameters at critical locations below water.
SFI Smart Ocean aims to create a wireless observation system including associated cloud services for real time and long-term multi-parameter monitoring of underwater environments and installations as a basis for condition-based maintenance.
The system will be based on a network of autonomous, energy efficient and smart underwater sensors for acquisition and analysis of large amounts of information on the ocean environment and offshore installations. Smart functionality in sensors and network will enable a superior utilization of the available data transmission capacity compared to existing solutions. Collected data is processed and stored in an associated cloud platform for data and application services. With a continuous focus on data quality at all levels, access to aggregated data will give authorities, marine industries, and research environments a much better basis for decisions.
Long-term historical data from stationary sensors in the ocean and on installations, in fjords, coastal areas, harbours and industrial areas, combined with advanced data analysis, will provide warnings on incidents and anomalies in operational environments as well as the marine environment, as a decision-making basis for countermeasures and interventions. Preparations for implementation of wireless communication solutions also for drones is important to support autonomous operations.
The centre works very interdisciplinary with a focus on interaction between technologies and partners so that the results from the research centre can have relevance and great value across the marine industries of petroleum, offshore wind, fisheries and aquaculture, and have an impact on increased sustainability, safety and cost-effectiveness within marine operations. To ensure the best possible innovation and value creation both for the partners in the centre and the marine industries in general, we have a lot of focus on ensuring maximum flexibility and making open and standardized solutions available both inside and outside the consortium.
During 2023, several tests of monitoring equipment have been carried out in the sea at Austevoll, and permanently installed sensors provide data for use in the centre. Data from two rigs with sensors is made openly available via data services in the SFI Smart Ocean cloud and NMDC (Norwegian Marine Data Centre). These rigs are also used for field-trials with several different systems for wireless underwater communication.
NCE Seafood Innovation became a new partner in the centre this year, so currently a total of 20 partners, ranging from the university, university college and institute sector, industrial companies, national authorities and industrial clusters are participating. The University of Bergen is the host institution, and the centre is affiliated with the Department of Physics and Technology at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences.
Contact
Project facts
Name
SFI Smart Ocean - Flexible and cost-effective monitoring for management of a healthy and productive ocean
Status
Active
Duration
01.12.20 - 30.11.28
Location
Bergen
Total budget
96.000.000 NOK