Data & Evidence Projects
Working alongside our customers and stakeholders, we create, invest in, and deliver critical data and evidence programmes.
As an island nation, the sea and seabed are essential to the UK. We hold them in trust, but we’ve taken them for granted. We now face two crises: climate, and biodiversity.
Our challenge is to maximise green energy while protecting and restoring our amazingly rich wildlife and fragile marine ecosystems. The Crown Estate has a unique role in helping to fit this jigsaw together and restore balance.
Together with our stakeholders & developers, we provide world-class data, providing the evidence to ensure that difficult decisions are properly informed, rooted in sound science, with the right insights into the trade-offs and impacts. We’re investing proactively in data and evidence programmes – and the tools to produce the best insights.
Outputs from our programmes have driven industry best practice, providing an evidence base to better understand engineering and consenting challenges, as well as developmental and environmental challenges. And importantly, these programmes facilitate collaborations between academia, Government, industry and environmental groups to come up with positive solutions together.
Scroll down to take a look at some of the data and evidence projects we are currently working on.
Current Data & Evidence Projects
These projects are conducted by the Marine Data and Evidence Team at The Crown Estate. The projects listed do not fall under the Offshore Wind Evidence and Change Programme (OWEC). However, we work closely with our partners and colleagues on OWEC funded projects, to ensure that lessons learned across all data and evidence projects are fed into decision-making.
Technical Data & Evidence Programme
Our Technical Data & Evidence Programme (TDEP) funds original science, technology and engineering research, aligned with our activities. TDEP is currently exploring opportunities for data creation in the areas of:
Wind, metocean and climate change
Seabed geology
To contact the TDEP please email mde@thecrownestate.co.uk or email Michael Blair, Senior Technical Manager (michael.blair@thecrownestate.co.uk).
The Offshore Wind Evidence and Change Programme (OWEC)
Offshore wind has an important role to play in helping the UK achieve net zero by 2050. As manager of the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland, we know that the sustainable growth of the offshore wind sector needs to be done in a way which is both sensitive to the importance of biodiversity in our precious marine environment and in balance with the wide range of interests from other seabed users.
To address this challenge, we have convened government bodies, the industry and key stakeholders from across the UK to work collectively on a shared mission, founded on the need to better understand and overcome the cumulative environmental impacts of offshore wind, and its effects on users of the sea and onshore communities.
The programme, known as the Offshore Wind Evidence and Change programme, will play a pivotal role in achieving the environmental aspirations of the Offshore Wind Sector Deal alongside other strategic delivery programmes, and the sectors full potential to support net zero.
Marine Internship Projects
Each year The Crown Estate’s interns carry out relevant and impactful research projects to drive value for the marine sector. Once finalised and approved for publication, these project outputs are held on the MDE. We hope to not only ensure that the hard work achieved by our interns can continue to add value, but that by making their work publicly available, we can promote collaboration and reduce duplication.
