Environmental data

Following the OSPAR decision 98/3 planning of decommissioning requires performing a high quality Environmental Impact Assessment and considering technical alternatives. The information collated in the assessment shall be sufficiently comprehensive to enable a reasoned judgement on the practicability of each of the disposal options, and to allow for an authoritative comparative evaluation. The assessment of the disposal options shall take into account inter alia:

technical and engineering aspects of the option, including re-use and recycling and the impacts associated with cleaning, or removing chemicals from, the installation while it is offshore;
impacts on the marine environment, including exposure of biota to contaminants associated with the installation, other biological impacts arising from physical effects, conflicts with the conservation of species, with the protection of their habitats, or with mariculture, and interference with other legitimate uses of the sea;

Planning and engineering decommissioning therefore requires historical and present environmental data, knowledge about environmental processes, results of studies into decommissioning options, results of research into environmental impacts and insights in new technologies. These data and information resources are distributed over many organizations, both public and private. To facilitate the overview and access we offer a number of metadatabases.

Library of Reports
With support of operator associations UKOOA, OLF & NOGEPA, national departments and institutes like a.o. DTI, NPD, BGS, NGU, CEFAS, and consultants like a.o. Det Norske Veritas, Rogaland, Akvaplan a library has been compiled and is maintained of relevant research and industry reports. These focus upon environmental matters and environmental impact assessments, but also include reports, specifically focussing on decommissioning, technological implications, overall market surveys etc. Where possible the full report has been included for downloading.

Library of reports

Geochemical maps

BGS and NGU over the years have collected thousands of geological samples of the North Sea seabed, that have been analysed for their geochemical composition. The results for 5 major metals have been determined and can be interrogated as geochemical maps.

Geochemical maps

Environmental monitoring

Next to public authorities also operators undertake considerable monitoring activities around offshore installations to register and to analyse environmental parameters in time. Coordinated within UKOOA a network of monitoring stations is operated in UK waters, providing input for the UK Benthos database. A comparable monitoring program is performed in Norwegian waters, coordinated within OLF, resulting in the MOD database. Metadata of the monitoring stations are provided.

Environmental monitoring

Geological sampling

On-line and up-to-date index to all marine geogical samples, taken in European waters, and ocean cores, collected worldwide by European institutions. This index is regularly updated by marine geological surveys and research institutes in Europe and was initiated within the EC-DGXII MAST framework.

www.eu-seased.net

Marine environmental datasets

The European Directory of Marine Environmental Datasets (EDMED) has been initiated within the EC-DGXII MAST framework and established itself as a de-facto European standard for indexing and searching datasets relating to the marine environment, covering a wide range of disciplines. It is a high level inventory, covering Datasets and Data holding centres. At present EDMED covers already more than 2814 Datasets from more than 574 Data holding centres, that can be searched by the Sea-Search website. Sea-Search partners are responsible for keeping their national contributions up-to-date.