Gaining High-speed Results from Surveying with a Smart Maritime Data Platform
Maritime surveying is one of the most difficult and time-consuming steps in offshore wind energy projects. TrueOcean radically shortens the process of processing data into information with its cloud-based maritime data platform (MDP). Underwater sensor data can be accessed in near real time. In addition, automated analytics accelerate the process for better quality results with standardized parameters. After three years of development, the company is now announcing its official product launch.
The Kiel-based team is bringing the speed of cloud technology, which users know from other industries, to the maritime industry. Data is stored according to the highest security standards in a platform specifically optimized for sensor data. “We will successively integrate further automation and industry-specific services,” emphasizes co-founder and CEO Frithjof Hennemann.
However, the platform is already massively supporting the data value stream of wind energy operators: “Collected data can be directly transmitted to our platform,” Hennemann continues. “Data is safely stored in one maintained and secured data space and ready to be managed and processed. It is accessible to all project stakeholders according to their permission given.”
The Impact of Autonomous Vehicles on Hydrospatial Data
The platform can also be used for data transfer, especially when autonomous vehicles are engaged to collect data in the future and a network (satellite, 5G or other) is used to steer these vessels. These future operations require new and innovative digital tools. Autonomy will massively reduce the amount of personnel and time required, and will reduce the costs per dataset collected. The amount of data however will grow constantly and exponentially.
“When will you be ready?”, rather than critical questions, has been the typical response the TrueOcean founders received when presenting their platform to wind energy companies. “The willingness to invest in offshore wind farms is back after years of zero growth,” explains Frithjof Hennemann, “so we are lucky with our timing.” Just recently, the German government passed the new Wind Energy at Sea Act, which calls for at least 30 gigawatts of energy to be produced offshore by 2030. Companies are now ramping up efforts to accelerate their projects. However, their digital infrastructure is not prepared for the new expectations.
Hard Drives to Bring Survey Data Ashore
As early as 2019, TrueOcean founder Jann Wendt, who has been involved in various maritime research projects as an expert and investor, recognized the need to catch up: “Lots of companies still used hard drives to bring survey data ashore for analysis. It took weeks until results were available and weeks again until measurements could be adjusted and new results were evaluated.” However, conventional cloud solutions are not suited for the maritime industry, as downloading such huge volumes of data would be too costly. Jann Wendt saw an opportunity in the market – and founded TrueOcean with Frithjof Hennemann and Onno Bliß.
From 27 to 30 September 2022, TrueOcean will exhibit at the WindEnergy Hamburg trade fair and will present its maritime data platform to interested wind energy stakeholders in a live demo (Hall B7, Booth JIU.005).
