Monitoring systems › Environmental and Wildlife Monitoring
Environmental and Wildlife Monitoring
Bird and bat monitoring for offshore wind
Detection, classification and recording of bird and bat activity — built to the consent conditions the site was granted, and engineered to survive where it is installed.
Consent conditions, not a technical standard, decide what this monitoring has to do. WISE Group supplies the system around the detection — the sensors and cameras, the enclosures, power and communications, the installation offshore and the service that keeps it running — working with technology partners who bring the detection and classification software.
What the monitoring has to answer
Every consented site is different. The conditions attached to a consent decide which species matter, what has to be recorded, how long the record has to be kept and, on some sites, what triggers a curtailment. The monitoring has to produce evidence that satisfies the condition — not simply a feed for someone to watch.
That makes this area different from the rest of what WISE Group builds. Elsewhere a standard defines the scope: CAP 437 for a helideck, class rules for a mooring. Here the scope comes from the consent, so the first conversation is about what the condition actually requires, before any equipment is chosen.
What WISE Group supplies
The detection and classification software comes from our technology partners. What we bring is everything that has to work around it, offshore, for years.
The system around the detection
Sensors, cameras and the hardware the detection software runs on, specified for the site and for the species named in the condition.
Power, enclosures and communications
Equipment built to survive an offshore substation or a turbine, with power and data paths that hold up through a winter.
Installation and commissioning
Access, lifting, cabling and the documentation the site needs in order to accept the system — the same project process as any other WISE Group scope.
Service for the life of the consent
Spares, verification and support, so the record keeps being produced for as long as the condition runs.
Telemetry and control in Orbalux
Camera-based detection needs light to work after dark. WISE Group supplies the infrared lighting and controls it, so illumination follows the operating need rather than running continuously.
Telemetry from the deployed systems, and control of that lighting, are integrated into Orbalux — WISE Group's own platform. The detection software stays with the partner; the installation around it is monitored and operated from the same place as the rest of the asset's monitoring.
Working with DeTect
DeTect, Inc. supply radar-based detection. Their MERLIN radar was developed to track small biological targets — birds and bats — in the airspace around turbines, and continues to work through darkness and weather that defeats optical detection.
Radar and cameras answer different halves of the same question. Camera-based monitoring identifies what is in frame; radar covers a volume of airspace and tracks movement through it, giving range, altitude and flight path. Which suits a site, or whether it needs both, follows from what the consent condition asks to be demonstrated.
Radar-based bird and bat monitoring → · About our partnership with DeTect →
Working with Spoor
Spoor develop AI-based detection and species classification from cameras. On some projects Spoor present the complete solution and WISE Group deliver the system behind it; on others WISE Group lead the project and bring Spoor’s detection into a wider monitoring scope. Which arrangement applies is usually decided by who the site is already talking to.
Camera-based bird and bat monitoring → · About our partnership with Spoor →
Related: Visual Monitoring · All monitoring systems · Service and support
Talk to us about a site
Tell us the consent conditions you are working to, the asset the equipment has to sit on, and when the site needs to be monitoring. We will come back with what a system would contain and what we would need from the detection partner.