The Crown Estate’s Marine Data Exchange (MDE) was established to support the marine renewables industry by sharing offshore survey data that could be subsequently used to inform future development projects.

The MDE collates data collected from offshore energy, marine mineral extraction and cable laying projects, and makes them freely available to encourage collaboration within the sector, reduce survey costs and de-risk offshore investment.

High-standard data maintenance and discoverability is critical to the MDE being fit for purpose.

ABPmer is commissioned by The Crown Estate to undertake the data handling tasks essential to the effective management and use of the MDE.

We prepare, validate and upload survey data and reports in strict compliance with the Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN) Data Guidelines. Thereby supporting the quality assurance of the data holdings.

As part of this contract, we also maintain a map of the spatial extent of each data series present on the MDE. This is provided to The Crown Estate monthly as a GIS datalayer (mapping) that can subsequently be interrogated by survey type, time period and spatial extent.

We also examine the data on behalf of The Crown Estate to explore general trends across windfarms, and work with them to develop the MDE platform to improve data discovery.

ABPmer’s data and GIS specialists are experienced marine data handlers, developing bespoke GIS mapping and data management tools for governing bodies, the public sector and marine and coastal operators.