Types of Data
The MDE holds data from a variety of industries, including marine aggregates, subsea cables, tidal and wave energy, offshore wind and also data from research and evidence projects.
Throughout the years, the MDE data holding has grown to almost 300TB of survey data from over 50 offshore projects across the UK; over 2,600 survey campaigns and covering over 15 survey themes, from geophysical data to marine mammal surveys.
Data Themes
The majority of surveys on the MDE are from geophysical and bird surveys, but there are a range of surveys covering social, physical and environmental themes.
Offshore industries, such as offshore wind, carry out numerous surveys across the lifetime of the project from pre-construction through to decommissioning, and so you’ll find multiple surveys from one theme for every project. For example, a developer may carry out 2 years’ worth of baseline bird surveys prior to construction and then carry out annual and seasonal surveys thereafter to monitor the effect of the project on seabirds. This generates a great evidence base to not only understand the marine environment in previously un-surveyed areas, but to also monitor change over time.
Scroll down to find the full range of themes.
Development Phases
The MDE holds extensive data across the lifetime of a project. By tagging data collected by offshore projects with a development phase, it is possible to filter against pre-, during, or post-construction phases in the case of offshore renewable projects.
The intensity of survey activity fluctuates over the lifetime of a project, with the majority of data held on the MDE being from the pre-construction phase but the post-construction data holding continues to grow as more wind farms become operational. Almost half of all post-construction survey data held on the MDE is from environmental monitoring campaigns. By bringing this data together in one place, the MDE is generating an evidence base that can be used to identify trends across the offshore wind sector. It also provides useful insights into observed effects of wind farms on the marine environment compared to what was predicted during the planning and impact assessment phase.
Leasing Rounds
This filter currently only applies to the offshore wind sector in the UK. Each offshore wind farm is associated with a Leasing Round during which seabed rights are obtained from The Crown Estate by offshore developers.
The first Round was Round 1 in 2001 which was a demonstration leasing round, designed to provide prospective developers with the opportunity to gain technological, economic and environmental expertise in UK waters. It catered for small scale projects and represented a combined capacity of over 1 GW.
Round 2 saw the UK's first commercial-scale offshore wind farms and enabled over 7GW of capacity through this round. Transformative growth came in 2010 with the launch of leasing Round 3. Rights to over 32GW of capacity were awarded across nine zones.
What standards do we apply to the data?
The Crown Estate work closely with offshore developers and operators to ensure that survey data held on the MDE meets the MEDIN Data standards and can be shared with the public as soon as it is reasonable to do so.
Whilst the MDE seeks to promote the re-use of survey data to inform evidence based decisions, it also strives to make it simple for offshore industries to provide survey data without processes and data requirements becoming overly onerous. Over the years The Crown Estate have worked with our offshore customers to define and to develop the right balance in terms of data requirements and the adoption of data management standards. This includes ensuring that the data held on the MDE meets the MEDIN Data Guideline standards and is defined by the MEDIN Metadata Discovery Standard; ensuring the discoverability and reusability of the data.
