EMEC Metocean Data for Scottish Open Innovation Competition

The European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) has provided a series of metocean data sets to be used in a new Scottish open innovation competition aiming to stimulate creative thinking and data science to design new data products for the benefit of the marine environment, communities and economy.

Organised by Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) and the Data Lab, Scotland’s Blue Growth Data Challenge will make available data sets from 2015 in-situ observations and numerical modelling from EMEC’s wave and tidal energy test facilities in Orkney.

The data sets include wave conditions at EMEC’s Billia Croo wave test site; meteorological observations in two locations adjacent to EMEC’s wave and tidal test sites, collected using MetPak weather stations; data from a short tidal current observational campaign using TRDI Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler; and numerical modelling results for four locations around Orkney, showing simulated timeseries of tidal water level and currents.

Data sets will also be provided by the Scottish Centre of Excellence in Satellite Applications (SoXSA).

The Challenge is open to those who are studying, researching or working with data or the marine environment and who believe they can creatively work with open data to create a useful output. The Challenge aims to stimulate people to create new or innovative solutions to a problem without predetermining what those solutions will look like.

Prizes will be awarded to teams and individuals that are judged to have produced the best output for the benefit of the Highlands and Islands region and the winner will receive a package of support to help further develop their idea.