Abstract
PacWave South (“PacWave”) is an open water wave energy test facility offshore of Newport, OR designed to provide a highly accessible marine environment for the evaluation of wave energy converter (WEC) technologies. As part of its infrastructure, PacWave will include environmental monitoring and an adaptive management framework (AMF) to define monitoring requirements, analysis methods, and organizational structure. Environmental data metrics, e.g., acoustic thresholds, will allow members of the adaptive management committee to make informed decisions on monitoring efficacy and need for defined protection, mitigation, and enhancement (PM&E) measures. These PM&E’s include monitoring plans to collect data on underwater acoustics, electromagnetic fields, entanglement, interaction, and benthic surveys. The AMF and its PM&Es will ensure robust assessment of potential impacts of WECs on marine ecosystems and wildlife, ensuring that marine energy projects are developed responsibly and sustainably.
Environmental monitoring at marine energy sites can produce large and diverse volumes of data, with variable density across data types, for example, underwater acoustics that generates terabytes of information compared to interaction and entanglement observations that may occur intermittently and are summarized in spreadsheets and reports. The vast range of data volume and type requires a robust data management system to handle each PM&E measure.
The Environmental Data Integration and Assessment (EDIA) tool is currently under development to support the process for data interpretation and decision-making. The EDIA tool is a dashboard that facilitates aggregation of disparate environmental data types, application of identified metrics, and comparisons of data against outlined thresholds that may indicate the need to enact a specific PM&E measure. It integrates with a range of data types including real-time acoustic and metocean data, surveys to measure EMF signals and benthic, and ship-based observations and interfaces with data portals maintained by PacWave and its partners to streamline data handling and storage. It is a cloud-based, online, interactive data dashboard that promotes a streamlined assessment process. The EDIA tool allows users to investigate the PacWave site through maps of observation locations, compare between surveys or events, and filter for specific instances of conditions.
The goal is to provide both the adaptive management committee and PacWave operations staff a method for evaluating data that transparently meet the needs of technology developers, regulators, local stakeholders, and the environment. Showcasing the relevant environmental data and evaluation metrics through the dashboard ensures a consistent reference frame to make management decisions. Successful implementation of the EDIA tool will support PacWave’s ability to minimize negative environmental impact and implement the prescribed adaptive management strategy.
The presentation for this paper at UMERC+ METS 2024 can be found here.