Knowledge

Denmark has set ambitious targets, to reduce emission with 70% by 2030 and become independent of fossil fuels by 2050. To achieve those targets, Denmark is planning to accelerate the de-carbonization of the power system, by replacing fossil fuel generation plants with renewable energy sources (RES). Offshore wind power will form the backbone of power generation in a decarbonized system. Already world leading in electric consumption share covered by wind power, Denmark plans to install an additional 6.8 GW of offshore wind by 2030, quadrupling the 1.7 GW already connected to the system.

In this video, Matthew Spaniol (Aarhus University) presents the interim results from the Interreg vb North Sea PERISCOPE project, a foresight study that involved scanning the horizon from the bird’s nest to identify the innovations that will impact the blue economies in the future, and the accompanying forecasting results that timestamp when in the future the innovations are expected to become commercially available. The session was developed in collaboration with MARLOG.

Autonomous unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) play a vital role in diverse underwater operations; localization is of great interest for UUVs mirroring the trend seen in self-driving surface and aerial vehicles. Unlike their land and aerial counterparts, underwater environments lack reliable Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) due to radio wave attenuation in water. Hence, alternative localization methods are imperative for both navigation and operational purposes. This study thoroughly reviews sensor technologies for underwater localization, including sonar, Doppler velocity log, cameras, and more. Different operations necessitate distinct localization accuracies and vehicle and sensor choices. Environmental factors, such as turbidity, waves, and sound disturbances, impact sensor performance. Conclusions are given on the coincidence between operational requirements and sensor specifications, with special attention to the open concerns. These considerations include aspects such as the line of sight for acoustic positioning systems and the requirement for a feature-rich environment for visual sensors. Lastly, a prediction for the future of underwater localization is given, where the tendencies indicate lower costs for sensors, making operation-specific vehicles more attractive, which aligns with an increased demand for cost-efficient autonomous offshore operations.

Physical model tests are often conducted during the design process of coastal structures. The wave climate in such tests often includes short-crested nonlinear waves. The structural response is related to the incident waves measured in front of the structure. Existing methods for separation of incident and reflected short-crested waves are based on linear wave theory. For analysis of nonlinear waves, the existing methods are limited to separation of nonlinear long-crested waves. For short-crested waves, the only options so far have been to use estimates without the structure in place. The present paper thus presents a novel method for directional analysis of nonlinear short-crested waves: Non-Linear Single-summation Oblique Reflection Separation (NL-SORS). The method is validated on numerical model data, as for such data, the target is well defined as simulations may be performed with fully absorbing boundaries. Second- and third-order wave theory is used to demonstrate that small errors on the celerity of nonlinear components in the mathematical model of the surface elevation can be obtained if a double narrow-banded directional spectrum is assumed, ie the primary frequency and the directional spreading function must be narrow banded. As the increasing nonlinearity of the waves often arise from waves shoaling on a sloping foreshore, the directional spreading of the waves will decrease due to refraction, and a broad directional spreading function will thus not be experienced in highly nonlinear conditions. The new NL-SORS method is shown to successfully decompose nonlinear short-crested wave fields and estimate the directional spectrum thereof.

This paper advances the conceptual understanding of strategies of port development companies (PDCs) through applying the business ecosystem perspective. This leads to a distinction between four stylized strategies for PDCs and associated types of services: minimalist (six services), integrator (six services) and ecosystem services (six services). An analysis of the services provided by a PDC reveals which strategy they follow. This approach is tested through a case study of Port of Rotterdam Authority (PoR for short) the state-owned PDC in charge of developing Rotterdam's port complex. This case study yields three important conclusions: first the relevance of the identified service types is confirmed, as PoR is or has been active in providing 15 of the 18 identified service types, more specifically all six ‘minimalist services’, all six ‘ecosystem services’ and three of the six ‘integrator services’. Second, PoR follows a ‘platform provider’ strategy. Third, the provision of ‘ecosystem services’ seems to become a more important part of PoRs activities. The number of provided ecosystem services has grown between 2006 and 2021 and investments in ecosystem services account for an increasing share of PoRs total investments. These results provide a basis for further research, amongst others to better understand factors that may influence the strategies of PDCs.

This study investigates how the recognition and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities influence small business performance via interactions with firm-level innovation capability and learning orientation. We frame the study within the maritime-sector context and seek to contribute to the understanding of how the interplay between opportunity recognition, exploitation, innovation capability and learning orientation affects the entrepreneurial performance of local businesses when there is a technological policy change. The study further frames its arguments from a dynamic capability perspective and tests its arguments with data from 284 local businesses operating in the Port of Tema. Findings reveal that opportunity exploitation and learning orientation as well as their interplay have a positive and significant effect on entrepreneurial performance. The study consequently presents local micro-entrepreneurial reactions to macro-level policy changes within the maritime sector – an issue that has largely remained uninvestigated in the African business literature due to maritime blindness.

As maritime technology advances, multi-energy ship microgrids (MESMs) are widely used in large cruise tourism. In this context, studying cost-effective and highly reliable energy system planning methods for MESMs in their entire lifespan becomes paramount. Therefore, this paper proposes a joint planning method for a MESM during its lifetime. Firstly, a long timescale coordinated planning and operation scheme is formulated with the aim of maximizing the Net Present Value (NPV) value, thereby reducing both project investment and energy supply cost. In addition, this paper introduces novel operation models that incorporate customer thermal comfort levels, considering thermal inertia, and ship navigation, accounting for the effects of waves and wind. These models enhance the flexibility and practicality of the planning process. Finally, to ensure the safe operation of vessels and alleviate the negative effects of uncertain wind and waves during ship navigation, a robust optimization (RO) approach is employed. A case study demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed method, with several comparison analyzes further highlighting its advantages.

This work presents the verification and validation of the freely available simulation tool MoodyMarine, developed to help meet some of the demands for early stage development of MRE devices. MoodyMarine extends the previously released mooring module MoodyCore (Discontinuous Galerkin Finite Elements) with linear radiation-diffraction bodies, integrated pre-processing workflows and a graphical user interface. It is a C++ implementation of finite element mooring dynamics and Cummins equations for floating bodies with weak nonlinear corrections. A newly developed nonlinear Froude-Krylov implementation is verified in the paper, and MoodyMarine is compared to CFD simulations for two complex structures: a slack-moored floating offshore wind turbine and a self-reacting point-absorber with hybrid mooring.

MoodyMarine is a weakly nonlinear potential flow model for wave-body and mooring simulations with a graphical user interface. In this work we present the extension of the model to deal with constrained multi-body dynamics. By combining different translation and rotation constraints most joints can be modelled. As the constraints are imposed through springs and dampers in the explicit time-stepping algorithm, a slight manual tuning is required to make sure the bodies are constrained properly. Nevertheless, this tuning is shown not to influence the final results. In the paper we compare to existing test cases in literature as well as against experimental data. In all test cases there is a good agreement between the target solutions and MoodyMarine.