Fugro hosted the 62nd Marine Measurement Forum on Wednesday 17th October at their Wallingford HQ. The event was held in the main atrium with impressive stage and exhibition facilities provided by OW Exhibitions.
With approx. 60 delegates, Anthony Gaffney, Global Metocean Service Line Director, welcomed attendees to Fugro House, whilst master of ceremonies Alastair Stagg introduced the programme of 11 presentations.
The first talk of the day was given by Thomas Dhoop from Channel Coastal Observatory (CCO) who presented a coastal wave atlas for England based on the CCO programme’s wave buoy network. Thomas shared information on the project within which Fugro has ongoing support involvement with maintenance of the buoy network. The next presentation was delivered by new additions to the ABPmer team, Robin Stephens and Paul Clement, who focussed on monitoring and modelling the hydrodynamics of Southampton Water. Rounding up the first session saw Mark Burnett and Guilermo Jiminez from Seiche, discussing the company’s range of sound field characterisation services. Mark and Guilermo fielded an array of questions on the application of the technology and data usage.
The forum then broke for networking, cake and coffee.
After the break Ketil Horn, from Nortek, discussed “Combined measurements of physical oceanography and biology using ADCP’s”. Ketil showcased some exciting new features found within ADCP data sets and invited the audience to identify ways in which the newly unveiled features could be applied to research and monitoring programmes. Finishing off this small sub section on current monitoring, Elizabeth Paull from Sonardyne presented a talk on current measurements acquired via PIES (Pressure Inverted Echo Sounder). Faced with the challenge of staving off a hungry audience before lunch, Terry Sloane delivered an lively presentation, sharing Planet Ocean and EcoSUBS’s visions for the future of AUV Technology.
Lunch offered the opportunity for more in-depth networking, supplemented by an optional tour of the Geohazard core logging facility. Delegates were also invited to guess how many pieces of Lego were contained in a jar for the chance of winning a Lego Fugro vessel.
After lunch Roger Scrivens, speaking on behalf of the MMF Steering Group, updated the audience on plans for MMF 63 through to 65 in 2019 and 2020. Then, Matt Geen, travelling in from his office on Lake Annecy, for ITER Systems, discussed Interferometric Sonar. With images of his fantastic office location matching interest in his presentation, Matt answered many questions from a very attentive, bathymetric focussed, audience. New member of the L3 ASV team Jordan Thomas then presented the ‘Innovate UK ARISE Project’, in a very lively manner, with musical accompaniment. The audience raised a host of post presentation questions for Jordan, on technology developments, payload and deployment procedures. Laurent Jaunet then gave the only ‘in-house’ presentation on behalf of Fugro, partnered with the displayed model Geowing. Laurent discussed developments in sub-seabed object detection and application for UXO surveys.
After another quick coffee break Chris Almond, from BibbyHydroMap, continued the autonomy theme delivering a presentation discussing the role of “Autonomy in the future of the survey industry”. It was then left to Paul Ellis of Kongsberg to deliver the closing presentation of the day providing an update and overview of the Geopulse Compact, sparking interest from many delegates.
The forum was then closed by Alistair Stagg, who thanked the committee, presenters and members of the organising team. The winner of the Fugro lego vessel competition was announced as Tony Youell (Aquatec). Attendees were then invited to join a tour of Fugro’s world class Geotechnical labs and Metocean facility.
To conclude the day, delegates broke for a well-deserved final networking opportunity at the Old Post Office in Wallingford.