Page 44: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Jan/Feb 2026)

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DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IDENTIFYING, MITIGATING UXO

Image courtesy Seequent said. “You can’t connect to satellites underwater. We need “MILLIONS OF TARGETS” to know where your sensors are … and that doesn’t exist

While offshore UXO is often discussed through a Eu- in the marine world comparing to what we do on land.” ropean lens — Baltic Sea and North Sea wind farm activ-

And then there’s the economics. ity, dense marine construction corridors, decades of legacy

Offshore investigations are expensive, and the cost curves confict — Bodger stressed the global scale.

“There’s millions of items… across the globe,” she said, can be brutal: survey, process, interpret … then send down pointing to heavily affected regions where confict left EOD experts and divers to investigate target lists. “The cost is not comparable to the investigation step offshore,” persistent contamination. She cited Laos as a top-impact- ed country, and also referenced emerging unknowns in Bodger said. “With our software and our solutions, we’re reducing that fnal list … less investigation, more survey-

Ukraine. She added that the marine environment is heav- ily affected in World War-era waters, noting estimates that ing… means they spend less money later.”

Grove described the practical reality that survey teams the Baltic and North Sea alone hold roughly 1.9 million and project owners face after a magnetometer campaign: tons of unexploded ordnance.

Beyond detonation risk, Grove emphasized another target maps flled with anomalies — thousands of “red long-term hazard: degradation. “These things are 80, 90 dots.” Magnetometry detects changes in Earth’s magnetic years old, they degrade. We don’t really know what’s inside feld caused by ferrous content in the subsurface. That means the system can light up for UXO — but also for them.”

In other words: the risk profle isn’t only operational plenty of harmless debris. “It could be a shopping trolley, safety; it’s also environmental and reputational risk, and it could be a reel of cable… you get a lot of data coming potentially long-tail consequences that are far harder to through,” Grove said.

The downstream problem is decision-making. If a proj- remediate later.

ect owner receives a deliverable with a target list of thou- sands of anomalies, every anomaly becomes a potential

THE OFFSHORE PROBLEM:

UXO, and therefore a potential schedule and cost hit.

TOO MANY “RED DOTS”

On land, UXO workfows beneft from relatively “They have to make a decision based on what they’re be- straightforward positioning and access. Underwater, those ing delivered,” Grove said. “If there’s thousands… that’s potentially thousands of potential UXOs, which have to assumptions break down quickly.

“For me, the biggest challenge is… lack of GPS,” Bodger be whittled down.” 44 OFFSHORE ENGINEER OEDIGITAL.COM