New cloud platform unifies subsea survey data formats for simplified management, analysis and sharing

Kiel, 1 November 2022. Subsea geo-information specialist TrueOcean GmbH has launched a new digital platform which accelerates the transformation of marine data acquired by diverse underwater sensors, including multibeam echosounders and related systems from any manufacturer, into actionable, easily shared information and insight via the cloud.

In development since the Kiel, Germany headquartered company was founded in 2019, TrueOcean’s smart marine data platform (MDP) arrives at a critical time for the wind energy, subsea survey and offshore contracting sectors, just as work begins on meeting ambitious new post-pandemic targets for increased renewable energy production capacity.

Just recently, the German government passed the new Wind Energy at Sea Act, a.k.a. the Easter Package, which calls for at least 30 gigawatts of energy to be produced offshore by 2030. Similar targets have been set by countries actively engaged in carbon-reduction globally, pointing to significantly increased demand for essential subsea data.

Wind energy companies are now ramping up efforts to accelerate their projects and digital infrastructure will become even more essential for both the efficient acquisition and management of marine data needed for licensing, engineering and navigational purposes during the planning, development, operational and decommissioning phases of the wind farm lifecycle.

Bathymetric seafloor and sub-bottom surveys are among the most difficult and time-consuming aspects of offshore wind energy projects, but TrueOcean can radically shorten the transition from data to actionable insight and information with its cloud based MDP, which enables access to underwater sensor data in near real-time. Further, the platform’s automated analytics improves quality and presents results within standardized parameters, so stakeholders are not required to purchase multiple software packages.

“We have taken a completely technology agnostic approach in that data from any subsea sensors can be directly transmitted to our platform, where it is safely stored in a maintained and secured data space, which also provides full management and processing capabilities. From here it is accessible to all project stakeholders according to the permissions given,” said TrueOcean co-founder and CEO Frithjof Hennemann.

TrueOcean’s unifying cloud-based and automated sensor data processing technology is a unique approach to overcoming the challenges caused by the lack of standardization in bathymetric, sub-bottom and other ocean data formats in the marine survey and underwater inspection industries. The platform is designed to foster internal collaboration and streamline subsea engineering and maintenance projects by enabling easy sharing of diverse information and insight to approved stakeholders.

“Our platform is a step-change from standard practices, enabling the marine survey sector to meet growing demand for their services by data acquired at a faster rate and with improved quality, while giving wind farm owners a much more integrated approach to subsea data management. This will be essential as their investment in new assets and infrastructure increases rapidly in the coming years,” said Hennemann.

The TrueOcean MDP, which is deployed through a unique multi-cloud approach using diverse vendors for improved agility and scaling, is a long-term solution able to effectively drive value and meet immediate growth demands of the wind energy sector today, while preparing users for an expected boom in subsea data availability enabled by new autonomous marine survey vehicles and the transformative business models they can unlock. These future operations require innovative digital tools, which will reduce the amount of personnel and time required, and subsequently, the cost per data set collected.

“Lots of companies still use hard drives to bring survey data ashore for analysis. It can take weeks until results are available, but the changing offshore wind landscape demands a much faster and more agile approach to acquiring and managing marine data. Our platform offers this now and is ready to unlock new savings and business models when autonomous vehicles start to deliver exponentially more data at a fraction of today’s costs over the next few years,” added Jann Wendt, founder of TrueOcean.