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Safer marine monitoring

The APPEA’s National Oil & Gas Safety Conference in August in Perth will hear about the way in which Health and Safety innovation is enhancing the design of seabed sampling surveys for marine environmental monitoring projects.

The Conference will hear that methods for risk reduction include the use of different types of equipment to minimise the number of equipment deployments – one of the high-risk activities of sea bed surveys.

Dr Garnet Hooper, a Senior Marine Ecologist with projects firm, Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM) said the innovations are welcomed given the inherent risks associated with working in a marine environment.

“Staff undertaking offshore surveys are subject to a large number of risks – with the potential consequence of severe injury or death,” Dr Hooper said.

“Understanding these issues and managing environmental risks is not only required for surveys to support petroleum activities, but should be a principal driver in the development of any “best practice” approach to risk mitigation for survey operations,” he said.

Dr Hooper’s presentation at the APPEA conference will highlight a number of the risks, providing examples on how safety by design can minimise these as far as possible, whilst maintaining high data quality.

“Risk mitigation, in conjunction with the need to collect appropriate high quality, scientifically-robust data are now principal drivers,” Dr Hooper said.

“The increasing role of health and safety in the survey design decision-making process has resulted in the incorporation of innovative techniques and equipment,” he said.

“Reducing the number of deployments can also reduce the overall survey period – reducing the period of risk exposure,” Dr Hooper concluded.

Dr Hooper will be speaking on Day 2 of the Conference – Tuesday, August 6 at 2:00pm.

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