The course is primarily practical based, and students will get hands-on experience with the relevant industry-standard software and data from the outset. Students will also spend one day in the field on the RV Callista acquiring geophysical data (such as multibeam bathymetry, sidescan sonar, water column velocity, and sub bottom seismic) that will be added to an exceptional repeat survey dataset that has been acquired over the same site since 2008, which will be the basis for their assignments.
Formal lectures at the beginning of the course outline the module content, the relevance of geophysical methods to offshore renewables, communications, and energy infrastructure, and to introduce students to the key concepts of acoustic surveying. Throughout the course, additional lectures introduce different data types and concepts. The module provides students with a holistic view of the offshore site investigation process through the example of a proposed offshore wind farm in the east Solent.
1.Processing of multibeam bathymetry data acquired during the boat day. Subsequent analysis and interpretation of the processed data along with pre-existing multibeam datasets that cover the proposed wind farm infrastructure using tools in GIS. Aiming to identify and determine bedform types and sediment mobility patterns, and the associated risks to the proposed infrastructure.
2.Interpretation of sub-bottom seismic reflection datasets (pinger, sparker, and boomer) to identify hazardous shallow gas deposits, and determine bedrock depth across the survey site. Students will also have hand-on access to sediment samples and core samples to ground truth their interpretations. Students will also process sidescan sonar data. Using their results, students will build a 3D ground model of the survey site using seismic interpretation software.
3.Geotechnical analysis of wind turbine foundation stability using interactive modelling that integrates core information and ground model results.