The Crown Estate has announced that it has begun work to digitally map the seabed resource needed to meet future demand as well as the enhanced co-ordination of future activities out to 2050.

The work is a response to growing demands on the finite resources of the seabed.  In collaboration with a wide range of organisations which have a role to play offshore, The Crown Estate is building an integrated, spatial analysis platform which will consider: existing and future demands on the seabed out to 2050; geographical constraints for all key offshore sectors; existing infrastructure; and environmental designations and future resource requirements for environmental habitats and nature recovery.

The platform will deliver the capability to identify key sectoral interactions over the coming decades in greater detail than ever before and will be used to:

• Model how future demands could be met under various scenarios
• Build a visual understanding of the ways in which a wide range of demands could be accommodated and integrated in a co-ordinated way
• Drive the design of The Crown Estate’s longer-term seabed leasing processes, and identify where knowledge gaps exist which, if addressed, could improve the sophistication of future planning
• Help ensure the seabed is proactively managed to enable the delivery of current and future policies, while protecting and enhancing nature/biodiversity and targets for the benefit of the nation and its communities

The work will complement and inform existing work in this space, including the cross-Government Marine Spatial Prioritisation work led by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in collaboration with the Marine Management Organisation (MMO), which addresses the management of all activities in English waters. Further examples include collaborating on relevant marine planning work within the devolved nations, such as contributing to Welsh Government’s Strategic Resource Area analysis and planned next steps on developing the Welsh National Marine Plan.

Work is expected to complete in 2025, and the live platform will be continuously updated to reflect any new information and evidence. As work progresses, emerging findings will be widely shared with stakeholders so that early learnings can be captured and refinements and improvements can be made.

In the coming weeks The Crown Estate, will look to convene governments, marine planning bodies from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and sector decision-making organisations to discuss how the outputs of this programme, and insights from across the sector, can be used to develop a long-term mechanism for coordinated action over the seabed, and how it can continue to play a critical role in delivering net zero and marine nature recovery.

Further information on this news can be read here.