As a part of achieving this goal, Department of Ocean Technology, Policy, and Environment at The University of Tokyo has established a new course called “Ocean Utilization Systems” that aims to fully understand ocean development and complexity through a systems approach. For Associate Professor, Ryota Wada, the purpose of the lecture is to take a comprehensive view of the offshore wind farm projects looking at the entire lifecycle of the socio-technical system:
” The overall purpose of this lecture is to bridge the gap between fundamental knowledge of ocean technologies and actual innovative systems that covers the full aspect of wind farm projects including design, fabrication, transportation, installation, and so on. With Shoreline Wind’s platform, we can learn the state-of-art method on how to evaluate the complex problems regarding cost and performance, by simplifying and visualising the processes for our master students“.
Use-case system for building most-efficient infrastructure for offshore wind farms in Japan
During the lecture, the master students will conduct group work to explore various infrastructure systems to find the most efficient approach for a specific region targeted as promising in Japan. The infrastructure design in Japan is assumed to present unique challenges compared to the existing industry in the EU.
“ First, the logistics can be complicated as ports in Japan are very small compared to European ports dedicated to offshore activities. Second, the harsh weather conditions, e.g., typhoons, need to be considered in designing robust offshore operations “.
To solve these challenges, the student will use Shoreline Wind’s design solution to explore various infrastructure systems to find the most efficient project approach in regards to time, monopile or floating, construction vessel usage and more.
” It’s all about being creating an efficient project scenario, based on a trade-off between total cost and performance. The offshore industry in Japan is currently looking to expand its capacity, but there is no simple clear answer for succeeding this development. Therefore, it is important that our master students understand how to balance this trade-off and obtain a systematic view, such as Shoreline Wind, in order to optimize our infrastructure“.
Developing innovative leaders and research for tomorrow’s digital offshore industry
Even though the department was established in 2008 and is relatively new, the faculty still has strong ambitions on empowering its students with an understanding of new system integrations. According to Ryota Wada, this will be a key strategy going forward:
“In this lecture, we heavily focus on the fusion of ocean engineering and new technologies, as this will define the next-gen leaders in offshore. A key strategy to manage the complexity of socio-technical and unique challenges in Japan will be system integration with a comprehensive view, using tools such as Shoreline Wind, which allows us to use model-based decisions to plan, predict and assess the knock-on effect of changes.
Going forward, the plan is to expand and include Shoreline Wind’s solution in more extensive research fields on modern technologies as floating wind, but also for building an efficient supply chain. This is also one of the key reasons for a collaboration, as Shoreline Wind technology has been used on many different developments of wind farm projects and contains global industry knowledge that can be used for future research.
“The question is, how can we meet the demands of carbon neutral? We can be inspired by how vessel operation and wind farm installation have been done in previous projects, as these parts are quite similar, but there is not much inspiration to gain for floating wind. However, when we talk about the processes and systems being utilized for project planning, risk assessments, cost analysis, then we can gain a lot of valuable insight into how we need to optimize our offshore industry and upcoming floating projects”.
