North.io Ocean Data Platform Product Launch

20.09.2022

Building new offshore wind farms in a fraction of the time – Kiel-based startup creates smart marine data platform (MDP) for gaining high-speed results from surveying.

Kiel, September 2022

Marine surveying is one of the most difficult and most time-consuming steps in offshore wind energy projects. north.io radically shortens the process of data processing into information with its cloud-based marine data platform (MDP). Underwater sensor data can be accessed in near real-time. In addition, automated analytics accelerate the process for better quality results with standardized parameters. After three years of development, the company is now announcing its official product launch.

The Kiel-based team is bringing the speed of cloud technology, as users know from other industries, to the marine industry. Data is stored according to the highest security standards in a platform specifically optimized for sensor data. “We will successively integrate further automation and industry-specific services,” emphasizes co-founder and CEO Frithjof Hennemann. However, the platform is already massively supporting the data value stream of wind energy operators: “Collected data can be directly transmitted to our platform. Data is safely stored in one maintained and secured data space and ready to be managed and processed. It is accessible to all project stakeholders according to their permission given.”

Especially when autonomous vehicles will be engaged to collect data in the future and respective network (satellite, 5G or other) used for steering these vessels is available, it can also be used for data transfer. These future operations require new and innovative digital tools. Autonomy will massively reduce the amount of personnel and time required. It will reduce costs per data set collected. The amount of data will be constantly and exponentially growing.

“When will you be ready?” rather than critical questions, this has been the typical response the TrueOcean founders received when presenting their platform to wind energy companies. “The willingness to invest in offshore wind farms is back after years of zero growth,” explains Frithjof Hennemann. “We are lucky with our timing.” Just recently, the German government passed the new Wind Energy at Sea Act, which calls for at least 30 gigawatts of energy to be produced offshore by 2030. Companies are now ramping up efforts to accelerate their projects. However, their digital infrastructure is not prepared for the new expectations.

As early as 2019, north.io founder Jann Wendt, who has been involved in various marine research projects as an expert and investor, recognized the need to catch up: “Lots of companies still used hard drives to bring survey data ashore for analysis. It took weeks until results were available and weeks again until measurements could be adjusted and new results were evaluated.” Conventional cloud solutions are not suited for the marine industry; downloading such huge volumes of data would be too costly. Jann Wendt saw an opportunity in the market – and founded north.io with Frithjof Hennemann and Onno Bliß.

From September 27 to 30, 2022, TrueOcean will exhibit at the world’s leading trade fair WindEnergy Hamburg and will present its marine data platform to interested wind energy stakeholders in a live demo (Hall B7, Booth JIU.005).

About north.io

north.io is a solution provider for the management, processing and analysis of raw underwater sensor data. Tailored to the needs of offshore wind, surveying, defense, security and government. With the Ocean Data Platform, north.io develops scalable solutions for the acquisition, fusion and analysis of complex sensor data, for applications in critical infrastructure protection, maritime security and complex environmental and infrastructure projects.

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