Crown Estate's offshore wind evidence & knowledge hub enters discovery phase
The Offshore Wind Evidence
& Knowledge Hub (OWEKH), an initiative funded by The Crown Estate’s
Offshore Wind Evidence & Change Programme, has begun to engage stakeholders
across the industry as it seeks to design and build a sector-wide open
portal to help streamline the consenting process and support wider efforts
to develop digital strategy within the UK's offshore wind industry.
The data and evidence collected within the knowledge hub will be curated
and interpreted by a Community of Practice. This aims to enable OWEKH to
increase proportionality and reduce repetition in consenting processes
by offering expert insight and analysis.
DEFRA, the Offshore Wind Industry Council Pathways to Growth (OWIC P2G)
and the Institute for Environment Management and Assessment (IEMA) form
a steering group, with stakeholder engagement and development of the digital
portal provided by Atkins.
Developers, regulators, marine specialists, and other professionals will
be able to access data and documents such as past impact assessment documents,
industry knowledge, datasets and academic references to inform their work.
The Discovery Phase of the project launched this month to gather insights
from across the industry and steer the design of OWEKH. During the
four-month period, the OWEKH team will be identifying key information sources,
levels of digital fluency, and the most efficient methods of information
delivery. This will help to ensure a future Hub design meets the needs
of the different parties who will benefit from a digitised information
bank, as well as prioritising interoperability, openness and user experience.
Sion Roberts, Marine Consents Manager at The Crown Estate and Project Manager
for OWEKH, said: “Information availability across our sector will be
a key influence on the speed of expansion for offshore wind generation
as we increase capacity to 50GW by the end of the decade. Offshore Wind
professionals at all levels need rapid access to contextual data of all
types to drive high quality development decision-making around the consenting
process. OWEKH’s discovery phase will provide a launch pad to understanding
how that information access should take shape.”
Rufus Howard, Policy and Engagement Lead at IEMA, said: “The offshore
wind industry’s information footprint is vast and for many professionals,
barriers to finding and collating relevant data about their site can put
them under time pressure. Providing a pathway to access information in
one place will result in highly desirable efficiencies and help the UK
wind generation make a step-change in process.”
Chris Mcdougall, Project Director for OWEKH at Atkins, said: “Information
and data availability has the potential to strengthen the pace of development
of offshore wind as the industry galvanises to meet the UK’s decarbonisation
targets.
“OWEKH will help to support healthy seas through a well-rounded and cross
sector understanding of the spatial complexities of our marine environment
and a discovery phase is a crucial element in understanding the detail
of requirements for an information hub, to ensure the end platform provides
a powerful and functional information environment.”
In this initial requirement-gathering phase, the steering group will be
seeking feedback from identified stakeholders on topics such as typical
information domains end use cases for information and data analysis, current
methods and barriers for access, along with key vectors such as accuracy,
precision, and timeliness. During this process, a full picture understanding
will be built up to reflect the priorities for both single project analysis
and for cumulative impact within a geographic context.
In-depth workshops have taken place and consultation with industry practitioners
continues. Individuals or organisations wishing to stay informed of OWEKH’s
progress are invited to contact the OWEKH development team at Atkins via
email Elspeth.mcintyre@atkinsglobal.com.
Joe Deimel, Environment Advisor, SSE Renewables, said: "There’s
no doubt that information and data is critical in the decision-making process
for offshore wind farm consent applications and that developments are better
and implemented faster where that information is readily available. As
development process stakeholders, SSE Renewables support the OWEKH steering
group and community of practice and we look forward to exploring benefits
and efficiencies through the availability of the platform.”
