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Displaying items by tag: SmartGreen Port

In what is been described as a ground-breaking project, Belfast Harbour  has already embarked upon a strategy to digitise, decarbonise and decentralise its energy usage throughout the port's 3,000-acre harbour estate.

The new initiative will further help enhance the port's commitment to uphold the highest environmental standards through innovative technology.

In a joint collaboration between Leicestershire-based Redshift Associates and the University of Leicester, the project will develop analytic solutions to extract operational information on shipping from remote sensing data by using the marine Automatic Identification System (AIS). This will enable the company to determine pollution emissions in real-time from shipping underway or in harbour.

Founder and director of Red Associaites, Professor Alan Wells said: “Redshift Associates is bringing together new approaches to air pollution in ports and harbours through satellite remote sensing.  The project will be funded by a grant from the £4.8m SPRINT (SPace Research and Innovation Network for Technology) business support programme.

Mr Wells added: “The basis of our collaboration with the University of Leicester, through the SPRINT programme, is its support in taking the visual data and applying a high level of validation and interpretation.”

In a feasibility study for the new service, the project team is working in partnership with Belfast Harbour to evaluate pollution emissions from shipping and other industrial activity to assess the overall atmospheric emissions inventory within the harbour estate. Redshift Associates will identify measures that will support an air quality action plan in line with the port’s sustainability vision.

The project is expected to contribute to the development of a space-enabled, commercial monitoring service for ports and harbours for maximising energy saving, pollution reduction, decarbonisation and transition to renewable energy options for port operations.

Published in Belfast Lough

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.