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TotalEnergies Denmark together with the Danish Underground Consortium (DUC) and DHI A/S will publish more than 30 years of data on environment and biodiversity trends in the North Sea on an open portal. The aim is to create the best possible basis for developing robust plans to protect the marine environment. With the expected expansion of wind farms, CO2 storage and many other offshore activities, the hope is that other stakeholders in the North Sea will make use of the portal and contribute data.
 
For decades, the North Sea has been the centre of Denmark's energy production with the extraction of oil and gas and the installation of offshore wind turbines. Now, further expansion of offshore wind farms and CO2 storage are on the way. Together with fishing, agriculture and many other human activities, this affects the marine environment.
 
DHI and TotalEnergies, on behalf of the DUC, have therefore joined forces to develop a public portal, named the North Sea Environment Portal, where decades of marine environmental data are made available to interested parties. This provides a solid and data-based foundation for taking care of the Danish marine environment and contributing positively to counteracting the biodiversity crisis.
 
Since the 1980s, the DUC has monitored the marine environment and collected large amounts of data on seabed conditions, water quality, fish, mammals, benthic animals and plants. This information is used for environmental impact assessments of existing and new installations. The data has been continuously reported to the authorities but has so far not been freely available to researchers and the public in a user-friendly format. DUC and DHI have set out to change that.
 
‘The ocean must be protected in the best possible way. We have a collective obligation to take care of the marine environment, and to do so, we need knowledge. Energy companies like TotalEnergies hold vast amounts of data that can benefit others if made publicly available. We hope that many more from the energy sector will contribute to the portal, so we together can gain an even better image of life in the North Sea,’ says Katrina Povidisa-Delefosse, Senior Environment Advisor at TotalEnergies EP Denmark, who has a PhD in marine biology.
 
The North Sea Environment Portal will provide access to data on the historical development of the seabed fauna and sediment composition around the platforms in the Danish part of the North Sea, thereby increasing the understanding of the development of the marine environment and of both endangered and invasive species. This will strengthen the entire offshore industry's ability to better protect the seabed habitats in the North Sea now and in the future. A task that has only become more relevant with the expansion of for instance offshore wind farms and CO2 storage that Denmark is facing.
 
DHI has collected and delivered environmental data to DUC for more than 30 years and is responsible for the design and development of the new portal:
 
‘The first step in protecting marine life is to understand the condition of the marine environment and how it is developing over time. This requires a lot of data and a great deal of expertise in how data should be processed and communicated to stakeholders, so that it can be used as actual support in decision-making. In this context, we find that transparent and open access to information is crucial for creating action and accelerating the work to safeguard the state of the marine environment and biodiversity,’ says Mikael Kamp Sørensen, Director and Head of DHI's Energy Business Unit.
 
The recently adopted political agreement on the expansion of 9 gigawatt of offshore wind farms in Denmark sets stricter requirements for sustainability and monitoring of the seabed. Here, the North Sea Environment Portal can be used to both search for historical data and update with new data. This can help to focus efforts and at the same time strengthen the monitoring of the marine environment.
 
The Ocean Institute (Danish: Tænketanken HAV) therefore welcomes the new initiative: ‘The companies working at sea have direct access to unique data on the marine environment and biodiversity around Denmark. This data is crucial for the actions across our society that can and must help minimise the environmental impact of the development of offshore wind turbines, CO2 storage and other offshore activities. Therefore, we warmly welcome the new marine environment portal,’ says Liselotte Hohwy, Director of the Ocean Institute.
 
The partners expect to have the portal ready by the end of 2024.

DHI receives Google support to advance the UN Sustainable Development Global Goals

The Global Wetland Watch project will contribute to climate change mitigation by mapping global wetlands with satellite imagery and AI.
 
DHI A/S, the global water advisory and technology company, is receiving USD 2 million in grant funding and additional support from Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, in order to advance the world’s understanding of wetlands, using global satellite observation systems and big data analytics. The Global Wetland Watch project will develop a novel AI-based algorithm to extract systematic and accurate information on wetland ecosystems from free and open satellite imagery. 
 
Wetlands are hugely important ecosystems and yet they remain poorly mapped and characterised. In fact, most countries in the world do not have a good account of their wetlands, and consequently, wetlands continue to be significantly undervalued and mismanaged globally. This is why DHI, in collaboration with UNEP and other partners, want to develop the Global Wetland Watch as a critical resource for tracking the status and extent of wetland ecosystems. DHI’s stated mission is to enable a sustainable future for water, and the company contributes to driving progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals through science and data-based client projects around the world.
 
‘DHI is already involved in several projects that incorporate satellite imagery and AI in our work for a sustainable future for water, and we will draw on this knowledge and experience in the Global Wetland Watch. Driving progress towards the SDGs, reducing biodiversity loss and mitigating climate change, are global challenges that require global collaboration and partnerships, and we look forward to contributing with our expertise and technologies to Google’s truly global Impact Challenge,’ says Mette Vestergaard, Chief Executive Officer at DHI.
 
Google.org’s AI for the Global Goals Impact Challenge is part of Google’s company-wide commitment to help accelerate progress towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. DHI is one of 15 organisations receiving support through the USD 25 million philanthropy challenge for projects that use artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate progress towards these goals. Out of many submitted proposals, 15 were selected for funding. Importantly, all of the projects will be open-sourced, so other organisations can build upon the work. More here.
 
‘Each of the 15 selected organisations share our vision for using AI to accelerate progress on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, and each organisation brings their own expertise to help move the needle,’ said James Manyika, Google’s SVP of Research, Technology &amp; Society. ‘We are inspired by the possibilities they see for how AI can be harnessed to help people solve societal problems, and are excited about the collective impact they will have over the next three years.’
 
If you want to know more about how DHI works for a sustainable future for water and water environments, have a look at our client projects.

Recent research indicates that nature-based solutions (NbS) can provide up to a third of the cost-effective mitigation potential needed by 2030 to limit global warming to below 1.5 °C. An example of NbS is blue carbon projects.
 
Blue carbon projects can help mitigate climate change and bring many benefits to the environment, but how should you start? A first step is to explore available solutions or tools in the market that can:
 

Track and identify at-risk blue carbon habitats such as mangroves, seagrass and tidal marshes
Accurately estimate and forecast carbon sequestration potential even in remote areas
Rapidly detect changes at the project site, allowing for agile response and management
Ensure credibility to the carbon crediting and verification process

 
Find out more in this blog post by DHI's Senior Environmental Consultant Yi-Mei Tan: What to consider in a nature-based blue carbon project.

Ørsted and DHI develop bat and bird monitoring guidance for offshore wind industry

Ørsted and DHI have developed a bat and bird monitoring guidance document to support protection of vulnerable bat and bird species in the acceleration of the offshore wind industry.
 
An accelerated deployment of offshore wind is necessary to halt the worst impacts of climate change, including habitat loss for bird and bat species across the globe. In response to the buildout of offshore wind farms, there has been a huge global development in the innovation and application of automated monitoring technologies focused on the collision risk for birds and bats. But few monitoring technologies have been developed specifically for detection of flying birds and bats. Most available open-source technologies are merely offshore adaptations of technologies commonly applied onshore without consideration of the particular operational and technical challenges in offshore environments.
 
This bat and bird monitoring guidance is an easy-to-use catalogue of monitoring technologies focused on progress and challenges for offshore wind farm application and offers a careful assessment of the current status of monitoring technologies in terms of bat and bird detection, installation solution, operational monitoring, retrofit potential and costs. This document builds a toolbox to ensure appropriate localised design for operating offshore wind farms monitoring programmes, tailored to the species, geography and knowledge gaps of a given region.
 
The current approaches and technologies available across the globe have been reviewed and assessed in terms of performance and compliance in relation to current monitoring and mitigation requirements, primarily during the post-construction phase. The assessment includes the following technologies:
 

Radar (2D and 3D)
Camera
Accelerometer
Acoustic equipment
Large-scale survey platform and large-scale telemetry

 
These technologies are covering all relevant spatial and temporal scales for assessment of bird and bat behaviour and collision risk. As collision mitigation is quickly becoming a central issue globally, the interfacing capacity of monitoring equipment with SCADA is included in this review, for the sake of integrating the possibility for smart curtailment where needed.
 
By making this guidance available, Ørsted and DHI hope to advance the offshore wind industry’s toolkit to measure, monitor, and avoid bird and bat collisions to build a world that runs on green energy in harmony with nature. The monitoring guidance is written by DHI colleague and senior ecologist Henrik Skov with contributions from Ørsted experts Rasmus Brøndum and Elisabeth Baden.
 
Read more here

New Danish research centre will investigate wetlands’ potential in fighting global climate change

Over the next six years, the Global Wetland Center will acquire more knowledge on how wetlands can reduce the emission and increase the absorption of greenhouse gases. The new research centre is established by DHI A/S, University of Copenhagen and GEUS and is supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation with DKK 60 million.
 
Nations all over the world struggle to reach their climate targets, and wetlands can make a crucial difference. Wetlands only constitute a small part of the planet’s total land mass but are critical to the absorption and emission of several greenhouse gases and are also important habitats for many endangered plant and animal species.
 
Over recent decades, many wetland areas have been drained for farming or urbanisation, and this has resulted in loss of biodiversity and in increased emission of greenhouse gases, as the collected carbon in the wetlands are released into the atmosphere as CO2. Peatlands for example only constitute about 3% of Earth’s land mass but they store twice as much carbon as all of the world’s forests combined.
 
There is therefore major potential in including wetlands in climate change mitigation but also a critical need for more accurate calculations of the emissions and knowledge about the most efficient solutions. This need is partly due to an information gap on the exact size and location of the wetlands as well as uncertainties about the total greenhouse balance for the wetland areas.
 
Now, experts and scientists from DHI, University of Copenhagen and GEUS, The Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, are joining forces to set up a new Danish research centre, the Global Wetland Center (GWC). The centre is supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. The three parties will jointly create more insights into how to best include wetlands in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.
 
GWC will focus on research and innovation within digital modelling tools, artificial intelligence and satellite data with an ambition to be able to provide nations all over the world with knowledge and concrete solutions to their work on reaching climate targets. The centre’s work will also lead to recommendations which will be presented to political decision makers through the centre’s close affiliation with UN’s environmental programme, UNEP. DHI already collaborates closely with UNEP through their joint UNEP-DHI Centre.
 
‘The objective of the centre is to enhance the ability to model wetlands’ contribution to the global greenhouse gas budgets and design mitigation strategies. We are very pleased that the Novo Nordisk Foundation has chosen to support the establishment of the Global Wetland Center to enable us to increase our knowledge and work within wetlands’ role in climate change mitigation and adaptation’, says Mette Vestergaard, CEO at DHI.
 
Guy Schurgers from the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management at University of Copenhagen and head of the new centre, states:
‘To understand the interaction between hydrology and biochemistry in the global wetlands, we will develop modelling tools in the Global Wetland Center, which combine field observations, experiments, satellite-based observations and technologies based on artificial intelligence. These new models will convert the greenhouse gas balance into a measurable unit and help develop management strategies that can reduce emissions and support a global shift towards climate neutrality.'
 
The centre will be established in 2024 and will be headquartered in Copenhagen and operate globally.

Frank Thomsen, Principal Scientist for underwater acoustics at DHI, recently participated in the third edition of the international conference OCEANOISE, where thought leaders from around the world shared their latest findings on the effects of human-generated sounds on marine life. Participants included regulators, industry representatives, researchers and NGOs, who all convened in Vilanova i la Geltrú, Spain.
 
The data presented during the conference shed light on the effects of anthropogenic noise throughout the entire marine food web, encompassing aquatic plants, plankton, invertebrates, fishes and marine mammals. These findings provide compelling evidence that in conjunction with many other pressures, human-generated noise poses a substantial threat to marine ecosystems and biodiversity. Furthermore, noise pollution is intensifying alongside the growing volume of global shipping activities and the rapid development of riverine, coastal and offshore energy infrastructures.
 
The OCEANOISE Conference Series Science Advisory Committee argues that technological solutions are available to start tackling this challenge. Through the deployment of advanced acoustic technologies and innovative strategies, it is possible to improve the acoustic balance of our oceans.

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