Consultancy service

The Applications Team provide a service to a wide variety of clients most obviously those involved in marine, coastal, offshore and environmental work. We have provided consultancy for applications such as coastal flood defence design and management, environmental assessments, offshore platform and pipeline installations, port development and pollution studies.

Projects Undertaken

• Renewable Energy Studies
• Offshore oil and gas industry
• Marine project planning and implementation
• Hydrographic surveyors
• Designers and operators of offshore structures
• Flood defences operators
• Ports and harbours
• Operators of tidally controlled equipment
• Insurance industry (risk assessment of coastal flooding)
• Developers of navigation, SAR or oil spill applications
• Producers of environmental impact studies
• Tide tables publishers
• Sailing or fishing clubs

Some other more unusual enquiries include:

• Artists and conceptual designers recreating tides in their work
• Events organisers planning a party on a beach
• Historians for authentication purposes
• Helping the Police with their enquiries and providing them with expert testimonies
• Schools and field study centres planning shoreline activities
• TV programme makers and film producers wanting accuracy in their storylines. Some recent TV 'appearances' include Granada TV's Battlefield Detectives and the BBC's Silent Witness programmes

Some projects undertaken by the team

The Team's expertise in providing custom offshore data was put to use in a major DTI funded project to develop an Atlas of UK Marine Renewable Energy Potential. POL was responsible for the energy from tidal streams, with the Met Office, ABP-MER and Garrad Hassan the other partners in the project. The High Resolution Continental Shelf Model (CS20) and custom software produced an extensive data set that was used to show the potential energy from tidal currents. The Atlas is freely available from the DTI as a printed and digital atlas.

POL has a long history of helping the British Sailing Team at the Olympic Games, and in Sydney in 2000, we set up a custom computer model of Sydney Harbour and incorporated this into POLPRED to provide information on tides and currents. We like to think that we contributed to the success of the Team (3 Golds, 2 Silvers - the most successful of the national sailing teams). We are currently working with the British Sailing Team again for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

As well as producing tidal predictions we also offer a tidal analysis service. Results of an analysis can be incorporated into our POLTIPS software. When Airbus needed to float the wings of their superjumbo A380 from their factory in Broughton, North Wales to Mostyn Dock on the River Dee, passing under some low bridges on the way, they came to us to carry out a tidal analysis of this complex stretch of water. Incorporating these results into POLTIPS, they are now able to plan the best time to transport the wings.

POLTIPS has also been customised with all outputs in Danish rather than English and is used by the Royal Danish Administration of Navigation and Hydrography.