The Crown Estate appointed ABPmer to help them better understand the potential for seabed change within their offshore wind farm lease areas, over the operational lifetime of projects and beyond.

We developed a semi-quantitative seabed mobility risk tool bringing together the properties of the seabed with the hydrodynamic processes at play at each site.

Hydrodynamic data was obtained from North West European Continental Shelf Tide and Surge Hindcast model from our Data Explorer. This was combined with site-specific information on environmental characteristics drawn from The Crown Estates’ Marine Data Exchange, including seabed sediment type, thickness, and the presence of mobile bedforms.

By combining and analysing these different layers, we were able to create gridded seabed maps setting out the potential for change over short, medium and long-term timescales.

To aid internal dissemination, we developed a web-based GIS viewer into which we ported the seabed mobility risk layers.

Learn more about our metocean data services.