A scientist from the University of Portsmouth's School of Mathematics and Physics has successfully bid for £772,372 funding from the Lloyd's Register Foundation to design a surveillance algorithm and maritime training programme to help reduce damage to undersea infrastructure and enable rapid repairs.
The project aims to develop a safety management system for minimising disruption when power and communications pipes and cables are damaged.
Professor Dylan Jones from the University will lead a collaborative project alongside Professor Ashraf Labib, Dr Banafsheh Khosravi and Dr Negar Akbari, involving colleagues from Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil and Cebu Technological University in the Philippines .
"This is a matter of growing concern worldwide. Loss of an energy supply or internet, for example, leading to interruption in services that are relied on to function daily and to do business which can have severe consequences for society and the economy. In extreme incidents, potentially it could be life-threatening if healthcare services are severely affected", said Professor Jones.
He added: "The focus for this project will be undersea infrastructure safety in Brazil and the Philippines - two countries experiencing rising and differing issues."
In Brazil, a need to develop rigorous undersea infrastructure safety policy and practices for the country's emerging offshore wind industry has been identified. Particular challenges that they face include shallow waters, co-existence with existing oil and gas pipelines, protection of a pristine ecological environment, as well as a lack of supporting infrastructure and trained personnel.
Robust policy and practices are also the required outcome for The Philippines which has very different conditions. It's a country with a geography that is archipelagic and is vulnerable to severe weather such as typhoons, exacerbated by global climate change, and seismic activity such as earthquakes and Tsunamis due to the islands' location on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", as demonstrated by the two recent earthquakes in the Central and Southern Philippines.
An increased number of incidents and the resulting need for repairs highlights the need to protect and ensure that undersea infrastructure is resilient.
A state-of-the-art monitoring and surveillance system for critical infrastructure will be developed that will improve safety for maritime stakeholders. This will enable rapid incident detection, immediate incident response and longer-term repair to restore functionality. The system will incorporate weather and data about the state of the ocean to ensure that monitoring can be continued safely during severe weather.
Additionally, two case studies will be developed and the results used to increase and improve maritime stakeholder awareness and create effective training programmes for the maritime community..
Maritime stakeholders that will benefit from the research include ship owners, operators and crews (from the fishing, energy support and freight sectors), maritime authorities and coastguards, port operators, oil and gas sector operators, environmental agencies, local and national governmental policy makers.
Each has a unique set of concerns, needs and preferences that must be identified and addressed in order to develop inclusive solutions to undersea infrastructure safety. While these are largely global and common to infrastructure located under the sea, there will be factors locally that must also be considered and accounted for.
