ForeCoast Marine: A strategic decision support tool for the marine renewable energy sector

Conducting Operation and Maintenance (O&M) activities in the marine environment brings with it significant business risks for the energy sector. At present, the scheduling of O&M activities for renewable energy arrays fails to integrate fully the available environmental and business data in order to plan for the impact of sea-state and weather conditions. When uninformed decisions are made with respect to the environment, significant commercial and H&S risks result. The aim of this project is to investigate the feasibility of improving O&M strategies through the development of a prototype O&M decision support tool, branded ForeCoast Marine. This tool will, for the first time, integrate multiple weather and sea-state forecast data (i.e. environmental data), O&M activity data (i.e. business data) and innovative software to inform and guide operations up to five days in advance. This will allow end users to minimise its commercial and H&S risks and increase its environmental resilience.