MARINE ASSET MANAGEMENT by Graham Cooper
This year there has been considerable evidence that operators of marine assets have become more aware of the data and assets that they hold responsibility for in their organisations. This has enabled them to become much more financially aware of the value that they can derive from their assets, whether datasets held in their archives or marine installations at sea or on and below the seabed. GeoSoft Solutions, a group within Fugro Survey Ltd. in the United Kingdom, are actively promoting solutions to new and existing clients so that they may develop increased awareness of their assets. Operators in different marine fields need to have information readily to hand so that they can react to changing business, financial and production scenarios. Many organisations will already have industry standard Geographic Information Systems (GIS) within their offices and GeoSoft Solutions will develop solutions for particular scenarios for such organisations. These systems will have been populated with asset information with either a backdrop of an electronic chart or a regional map covering their area of interest. One such organisation to require this has been Guernsey Electricity in the Channel Islands. Guernsey Electricity has a well established GIS for their land
assets and monitoring of such. However early in 2003 they identified that there is need for a system by which they could monitor a developing marine incident that might impinge upon their electricity cables between France, Jersey and Guernsey. GeoSoft Solutions were awarded a contract by Guernsey Electricity in June 2003 to supply two Marine Digital Atlases, which were to have their cable
Graham Cooper is manager of GeoSoft Solutions, a group within Fugro Survey Ltd., in Great Yarmouth in the UK. Graham has 28 years experience in the land and hydrographic survey industries and has concentrated on creating a GIS centre of excellence. He was a member of the committee which produced the ‘Guidelines on the Use of Multibeam Echosounders for Offshore Survey” for IMCA. He was also on committee that produced the draft recommendations for the “Minimum Technical Requirements for the Acquisition and Reporting of Submarine Cable Route Surveys” for the ICPC. He can be contacted at g.cooper@fugro.com
information superimposed over a chart of the Channel Islands and French coast. Functionality embedded within the system included the display of a part of an Electronic Navigation Chart (ENC) in vector format, spatial attributes, as laid cable positions and zoom, pan and vessel position display. An operator in Guernsey Electricity’s office is able to enter the position and heading of a vessel through the keyboard and set a circle of influence. This indicates to the operator, in both graphical and analytical modes, whether the vessel and any towed equipment might be impinging upon their assets. Guernsey Electricity can then advise the vessel and monitor the incident as it develops. An important aspect of the Marine Digital Atlas is that Guernsey Electricity can specify their required functionality at the outset of and build upon it in the future. It need not be too complex in the beginning and enables the client to demonstrate to the authorities that it has a monitoring system in place should an incident develop. In time to come similar systems will become common in many other industries both in the coastal environment and in the deep ocean. Graphical displays are a powerful tool through which information can be relatively easily published to the owner of marine assets and upon which key decisions can be made. ENC vector charts contain a considerable amount of attribute data and together with purpose built queries can be one of the parameters for financial, environmental and energy decisions. The author would like to thank Guernsey Electricity for allowing permission for this article to be published in SubTel Forum. 22