The Crown Estate’s “Whole of Seabed” approach helps plan seabed use around England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Considered a world first, geospatial innovation helps make sense of highly complex and competing demands, driving better planning decisions.
The Crown Estate manages the seabed and much of the coastline around England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Its vision is to create the most sustainable and attractive marine economy and environment in the world, through enabling green energy, driving economic growth and creating and protecting thriving biodiversity and marine environments.
The Whole of Seabed approach uses Esri’s GIS (Geographical Information System) technology to create scenarios that simultaneously consider the demands upon the seabed up to 2050, including offshore wind, carbon capture, telecoms and minerals, while protecting the interests of nature.
World leader in offshore wind
This method has enabled the Crown Estate to play a key role in supporting the UK’s position as a world leader in offshore wind development, a sector which generated enough energy to power 50% of UK homes last year.
In July, the government announced a new partnership between the Crown Estate and Great British Energy, which will see the two work together to develop an extra 20-30GW of offshore wind power.
The move supports the accelerated delivery of clean energy infrastructure, benefiting millions of homes and businesses across the country.
By prioritising different data, the Crown Estate spatial planning system ensures all environmental, industrial and social interests and constraints are fairly represented.
Scenarios are then compared in a dashboard to understand the differences in cost, constraint or displacement, among other criteria.
The system was developed by the Crown Estate’s Marine and Digital teams, and includes data from over 250 sources, allowing for scenario planning for a wide range of marine industries.
Development decisions based on robust data
With an increasingly busy seabed, it is critical that development decisions are based on robust data, as Michelle Moore, spatial planning director at the Crown Estate, highlighted: “Advanced Esri spatial analysis tools allow us to tackle complex, multidimensional problems in an open and transparent way.
“Our unique ability to plan for the long-term and convene a wide range of stakeholders helps us to balance all interests to achieve the best outcomes for net zero, nature and economic growth.”
The Crown Estate programme has recently won an Esri Special Achievement in GIS Award at the Esri annual User Conference in California, one of the world’s largest geospatial industry events.
Recognising organisations that are demonstrating geospatial leadership and setting new precedents for the global GIS community, award winners are selected by Esri’s founder and president Jack Dangermond.
True innovators in marine spatial planning, the team’s work is of critical national importance making them a very worthy winner.
Geospatial innovation for the green energy transition
“Geospatial innovation is helping the Crown Estate balance a green energy transition to net zero and nature recovery while creating a thriving marine economy,” said Gus Jaspert, managing director, marine at the Crown Estate.
“We are incredibly proud to win this award, which is testament to our world-leading work in spatial analysis using Esri software, and a demonstration of our ongoing investment in digital technology and skills. It helps make sense of highly complex and competing demands on the seabed, driving better planning decisions for the benefit of the nation.”
The Crown Estate is an independent company, which manages a diverse £16bn portfolio, including the seabed and much of the coastline around England, Wales and Northern Ireland, urban centres and development opportunities.
Through the management of its portfolio, it’s helping to solve some of the nation’s major challenges, including delivering net zero and the energy transition, enhancing biodiversity and nature recovery.
