UK: Marine Data Exchange grows by 20% since 2015

Over 500 new surveys have been added to The Crown Estate’s Marine Data Exchange (MDE) since 2015, making 60% of all survey work completed by offshore renewable energy customers freely accessible via the platform.

The platform includes a host of new wind, wave and tidal data, as well as landscape assessments, bird and mammal population studies, habitat characterizations and archaeological studies, The Crown Estate informed.

The MDE’s over 100 terabytes of data have also now moved into the Cloud to simplify access to information, and according to The Crown Estate, users can opt to receive alerts when new information is uploaded.

Huub den Rooijen, Director of Energy Minerals and Infrastructure at The Crown Estate, said: “We’re delighted to be sharing more marine data than ever, via a newly improved platform, enabling all those with an interest in the offshore environment to benefit from existing studies and ultimately helping to unlock further research and investment offshore.”

The MDE was developed in 2012 by The Crown Estate, as part of its active management of the UK seabed.

It provides a freely accessible platform to store, manage and share the data collected during the planning, building and operation of offshore renewable energy projects, with the aim to help de-risk further investment in the sector.