Hydrographers Search for Savings - Ocean Business 2015

Ocean Business took place between 14-16 April at the National Oceanographic Centre in Southampton. There were over 300 exhibitors in two giant marquees, a three-day schedule of training and demonstration sessions and the Offshore Survey 15 Conference. Richard Groom reports for GW.

The main event attracts fringe activities which this year included a Blue Economy Day jointly led by FIG and IHO, and a Maritime Autonomous Systems workshop which was held at the NOC’s new Marine Autonomous Robotic Systems Innovation Centre. Ocean Careers was another parallel event at which practising hydrographic surveyors gave students their insights into the industry and also offered one-to-one discussions.

Oil Price Collapse

Ed Danson opened Offshore Survey 2015 with disturbing thoughts about the effects on the offshore industry of the recent oil price decrease. In particular, he had plotted the price of oil on a graph starting from 1900 to the present day and had observed that, at present day prices, it had been at $20 to $30 per barrel up until the formation of OPEC in 1973. A sobering thought, but he forecast that it is unlikely to return to that price. $70 per barrel seems likely. Against this backdrop, oil companies are out to save money and a number of the presentations were focused on using technology and new thinking to do just that.

Rafael Ponce, global maritime business development manager for Esri, gave the keynote address on the first day. It appeared, from his talk, that the hydrographic world has not embraced GIS like those of us on land. The ‘C’ word – collaboration – came up and there was a hint of BIM. This of course is not surprising because GIS should be the technology that brings datasets together, especially ‘big data’ sets with the ability to share them using web GIS.

Burn the Budget!

Bureaucracy was the target for Celina Thom, project manager at DOF Subsea. Her talk could have been delivered at almost any conference. She reckons that substantial savings can be made by challenging the conventional wisdom that we all take for granted, against the background of needing to reduce costs by 40% in response to the fall in the oil price. Her approach can be summed up in the phrase ‘progress is not doing better what shouldn’t be done at all’. Her talk was packed with ideas. She challenged the budgeting process and KPIs, timesheets, the qwerty keyboard and even the bureaucracy that shackles effective health and safety. Brave lady.

Calibration

Danny Wake, from Subsea7 also challenged the way things are done, but his target was calibration. Current methods require measurements to be made using higher orders of survey, traditionally land survey, but this involves hiring a land surveyor to do the work and therefore expense. He argued that the calibration intervals are generally too close, that sensors have improved and that methods of survey should be updated. Looking at the problem from another point of view, the specifications demanded by clients were, he said, written for a bygone technological age and need to be rewritten. He estimates that calibration costs could be cut by 40% in this way.

Staying with the subject of calibration, Jim Powell and Stuart Leakey from PLA (Port of London Authority) described work carried out in conjunction with UCL MSc student LiDong Ding. They surveyed one of their vessels to determine 3D sensor offsets by laser scanning the vessel using a Leica C10 scanner as well as using the traditional method – total station observations. The results were disturbingly different and they discovered large error ellipses in the vertical direction from the total station survey. They then surveyed a second vessel using a Leica MS50 and produced even better results. They also revealed that when they put the refined values into the processing software, artefacts that appeared in data computed using less accurate offsets vanished, making processing of surveys easier as well as more accurate.

USVs and AUVs

James Williams from Swathe Services spoke about USVs (Unmanned Surface Vessels). They come in three categories for inland waterways and rivers, for near shore and for offshore, and there is an ever-increasing choice – many of which were being exhibited. AUVs (Unmanned Autonomous Vessels) operate within the water body. The main difference is in communications. An AUV can only have low capacity narrowband communications with its controlling vessel, whereas wideband communications are available to USVs. This lack of communication is a problem for AUVs because data has to be stored during the mission, which could last up to 72 hours and downloaded in bulk when it is recovered. What if there was an equipment malfunction during the mission? The result could be a lot of abortive work.

‘Caris Onboard’ was presented by Michael Redmayne of Caris and Andrew Orthmann of TerraSond. It is a software package that could help reduce this risk whilst also speeding up data processing. The software is carried on the AUV (or USV) and can undertake up to 80% of the data processing whilst the AUV is on its mission. It can also prepare basic coverage plots to send to the surface, from which the controlling vessel can abort the mission should a sensor not be operating correctly. For USVs, it can send a more detailed product.

AUVs have been playing an important role in the search for the wreckage of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. Chris Moore from Phoenix International Holdings told delegates about the technology and methods involved. There were two presentations on the use of AUVs for pipeline inspection. Vincent Latron from Total E&P described the use of this platform for surveying oil flowlines and risers for an oilfield off Angola. The AUV flew 6m above the pipeline carrying a number of sensors, including a laser profiler which was used to survey a narrow swath over the pipelines. The AUV was able to complete the task quicker than an ROV (Remotely Operated Vessel), which is connected by cable to the surface controlling vessel. In addition to using the data to inspect the pipeline, they plan to run a programme of monitoring surveys to measure ground deformation caused by oil extraction, particularly at the wellheads.

A laser profiler is also used in a vessel designed by MMT. Ola Oscarsson described the vessel, which is custom built for inspection surveys of pipelines. There was also a presentation from Jason Gillham of 2G Robotics, which manufactures underwater lasers (using the triangulation technique). They have swath coverage of 50° and a range of up to 6m. He gave a number of examples of the equipment in use for detailed measurement of underwater structures. It can either be deployed in ‘profile mode’, in which the scanner works in similar way to mobile mapping or in ‘scanning mode’, where the instrument remains in the same place but rotates.

Underwater Photogrammetry

Attention then turned to remote sensing in shallow waters. Andy Waddington from LW Partners described a comparison test for an area in the Scilly Isles between satellite imagery from WorldView-2 against a control dataset of helicopter mounted LiDAR flown by Pelydryn. The results showed strong comparison down to about 3m depth at which point the satellite imagery seems no longer to be picking up the seabed. Interestingly, this was the third such comparison survey that Waddington had undertaken, the results of the previous ones having been kept private. He believes that a specification is needed in order for satellite bathymetry to become an accepted technique and stressed the point that most of his customers need the data for work other than traditional hydrography, for which the IHO specs apply.

As the name implies, Ocean Business ranges well beyond hydrographic survey and the variety of exhibition stands emphasised this. The conference was focused on hydrographic surveying and as such, several of the presentations were of direct relevance to those who work in rivers and lakes but primarily on land. The fee for attending both days of the conference was £340. For those who could not make it, the proceedings are available for £35 from www.oceanbusiness.com.

This article was published in Geomatics World July/August 2015