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Content archived on 2024-06-18

Development of a passive location and identification sonar tag for assisting in the laying, installation and long term monitoring of subsea cables and pipelines

Objective

Expansion of offshore oil & gas fields is inevitable. This will require significant investment in new pipelines to bring the resource onshore. 10,000km of pipelines form part of the oil & gas infrastructure in the North Sea. Combined with the huge growth in the installation of offshore wind farms & telecommunication networks, many thousands of kilometres of newly installed subsea cables & pipelines (CPs) will be required. It is critical that such underwater infrastructure is properly managed over its lifetime to ensure proper laying, inspection, quality maintenance, quick repair and comprehensive decommissioning.

Existing state-of-the-art cannot currently provide a complete lifecycle solution. The SonaTag project will develop a novel low-cost position, location & identification passive underwater tag and a custom designed sonar system designed to ‘see’ the tags. SonaTag will offer CP laying contractors a means to greatly reduce the cost of CP laying operations, thereby ensuring its initial adoption in the market. Downstream stakeholders such as IMR (Inspection Maintenance and Repair) crews and governments will have the means to locate and uniquely identify these vital assets.

The system will provide a robust environmentally sound solution for longterm lifecycle tagging by achieving the following objectives: specialised sonar with transmit power adequate for deployment (220 dB) at transmit end to achieve operational accuracy of +/- 0.1m @ 10m to 1000m range; the ability to detect range & position of tag in 5secs @ 1000m and 2 secs @ 10m from sonar transceiver; inert tag device with detectability in high noise environments i.e. seabed.

Using this solution the project expects to comprehensively address the problem of unmanaged critical underwater infrastructure & address the high operation costs of laying CPs. In doing so, we will deliver €45 million in revenue with a profit of €9.3 million to the SME partners after 5 years, while creating over 100 high skill jobs.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Call for proposal

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FP7-SME-2013
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Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

BSG-SME - Research for SMEs

Coordinator

SUBSEA ASSET LOCATION TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED
EU contribution
€ 448 113,75
Address
PORTLAND MARINA 19
DT5 1DX PORTLAND
United Kingdom

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Region
South West (England) Dorset and Somerset Dorset
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

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Participants (7)

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