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

To help them achieve this, we developed a semi-quantitative seabed mobility risk tool that brought together the properties of the seabed with the hydrodynamic processes at play at a given site of interest.

We drew site specific information on environmental characteristics (including seabed sediment type, thickness and the presence of mobile bedforms) from The Crown Estates’ Marine Data Exchange, whilst hydrodynamic data was obtained from our SEASTATES North West European Continental Shelf Tide and Surge Hindcast model.

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.

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.