New report from BoM outlines findings from NERA-supported Tropical Cyclone Reanalysis project
NERA’s collaborative industry project with the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) to better understand potential tropical cyclone impacts in Australia has reached an important milestone with the release of the Objective Tropical Cyclone Reanalysis report and the project database.
The report outlines the key findings of a research initiative, which has brought NERA and the BoM together with industry partners Woodside Energy, Shell and Chevron to undertake this objective reanalysis of tropical cyclones in the Australian region.
The project aimed to improve the quality of historical tropical cyclone data to enhance understanding of the risk profile for new and existing offshore infrastructure. The accuracy of weather information is not only critical to creating safe working environments, it can also affect the industry’s ability to operate efficiently.
The release of the results means better informed decision-making for operators, through which there is great potential to reduce engineering costs, boost operational efficiency and improve the safety of workers on site.
As part of the project, BoM incorporated recent advances in algorithms that extract key information from geostationary satellite data and applied that to data collected in Australia from 1981-2017.
“The Tropical Cyclone Reanalysis project was one of NERA’s earliest, and it’s fantastic to see how industry and research can collaborate to solve industry-wide problems and share knowledge to unlock new opportunities,” says Miranda Taylor, NERA CEO.
“This research is enhancing the understanding of the risk profile for new and existing offshore infrastructure for the benefit of Australia’s energy resources community now and into the future.”
This project provided the opportunity for Australia to be at the forefront of international efforts in tropical cyclone analysis. The methodology used in the project is transferable to other tropical cyclone affected regions and could be scaled up to produce a global objective analysis.
“It’s a testament to the collaborative nature of this project that all project partners have agreed to making the project deliverables free so that others can also benefit from the findings,” says Ms Taylor.
“NERA hopes that the wider industry will now use this data to generate synthetic tropical tracks for criteria estimation to better inform engineering design and potentially reduce construction costs.”
You can find out more about the project on:
- In Edition 1 of Creating Our New Energy Futures.
- The Bureau of Meteorology website, where you can also download the project data.