SATURN Project Updates
Catch up on the SATURN project activities before we break for the holidays!
The Tripartite Working Group
Our SATURN colleagues Roberto Yubero (TSI) and Christ de Jong (TNO) recently participated in the meeting of 'The Tripartite Working Group', to present the outcomes of the SATURN project as presented in the project's 'Final Report on Vessel URN Measurements'. Tripartite is a collaborative group of associations that meets annually, and represents ship builders, classification societies, and shipowners.
When it was initially founded, Tripartite was designed to support the establishment of the Common Structural Rules for Bulk Carriers and Tankers, however, in recent years its work has been extended to include other important industry issues.
Workshop Participation by MARIN
Our partners at MARIN recently presented their work on modelling the mitigation effect of air injection on ship URN at two separate workshops. These events focused on the impact of underwater noise on marine fauna:
Underwater Noise Pollution: BluEcho project (15th-16th October). The BluEcho research project is aims to address underwater noise pollution, assessing the level of noise generated by ships and wind farms in the Adriatic, North and Baltic seas.
Bioacoustics Day (29th October). This year’s edition of the Bioacoustics Day was jointly organised by WUR, IBL, IMR and VLIZ, and was designed to provide scientists, industry and government with an opportunity to exchange ideas and learn about recent innovations and research in the field of underwater acoustics.
These presentations were based on a previous conference paper delivered as part of Internoise2024, entitled, “A procedure for estimating mitigation effect of air injection on ship underwater radiated noise”.
Download your copy of this presentation at the following link!
SATURN Harmonized Test Signals
Using harmonized test signals for bioacoustics playback studies facilitates the comparability of results. In SATURN, we have developed a suite of artificially synthesized ship sound signals that are considered suitable for the assessment of harmful underwater noise characteristics, in the sense that the signals are relevant for the impact on marine life and subject to technically achievable mitigation measures.
You can download this suite of ship sound signals and the accompanying report which describes the approach for selecting and synthesizing ship underwater radiated sound signals for playback studies at the following link!
Meeting of the ISO Working Group, Berlin
Our SATURN partners were kept busy in October with the attendance of the ISO meetings of the TC 43/SC 3 (underwater acoustics) which were held in Berlin from 21-25 Oct! This is a plenary meeting that happens every 18 months, and was attended by our SATURN colleagues from TSI, TNO, DNV and JASCO Applied Sciences. Our colleagues participated representing the work undertaken in Work Package 2 which focuses on standardized methods to facilitate impact assessment and cost-effective URN measurement, and attended corresponding sessions both in person and online.
The contributions from SATURN at this event, were primarily linked to working groups WG1 and WG6 which are tasked with the development of ISO standards in the field of underwater acoustics:
TC 43/SC 3/WG 1 - Measurement of Underwater Sound from Ships
TC 43/SC 3/WG 6 - Aquatic Bioacoustics
Enterprise Ireland Documentary
We would like to thank Enterprise Ireland for showcasing a short documentary about the SATURN project at this year’s Horizon Europe Impact Conference which took place on Thursday, 5th December 2024 in Dublin. This event aimed to highlight Ireland’s success in Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe and showcased the impacts of participation for small and large enterprises, researchers, academics and other stakeholders.
We would also like to thank the team at Pi Comms - Video Production Company who interviewed our MaREI coordination team members Gerry Sutton and Emma Knowles on site in Cork as part of this documentary.
Details on how you can watch this short video are available here!
Recent Presentations
Séminaire GICAN sur le bruit sous-marin (6th December 2024) - Eric Baudin (Bureau Veritas) delivered a presentation entitled ‘How to silence ships: Preliminary results from the SATURN project’ to the GICAN (French Industry Cluster of ship building) this month which included contributions from work conducted by Johan Bosschers, Thomas Lloyd, and Frans Hendrik Lafeber (MARIN). (Read More).
Coastal and Marine Systems Research Group (19th December 2024) - Project coordinator Gerry Sutton (MaREI, UCC), was on site at MaREI to deliver a brief talk to the Coastal and Marine Systems research cluster about the development of Underwater Noise research in Europe, with particular reference to how projects like SATURN have contributed to the field! (Read More)
SATURN is an EU-funded project researching solutions to the problem of underwater radiated noise caused by shipping and other vessels. Learn more about SATURN at www.saturnh2020.eu.