DEI Professor in Practice attends the New Bedford Ocean Cluster’s Inaugural Conference

The aim of the one-day event, held at the very impressive, New Bedford Whaling Museum, was to bring specialists from ocean energy together with military personnel to consider the plethora of issues related to the physical security of subsea assets - offshore wind structures, telecoms cables and oil & gas lines, in particular.

The event sought to stimulate two-way flows of know-how. technologies and insights from military sources to offshore energy and vice versa. On the event, Alan said, “It was a privilege to be asked to participate in the panel as the UK’s sole representative. Other panellists included representatives from a military contractor, a former US Army veteran and local government economic development. There is most definitely a rapidly rising tide (pun intended) of interest in subsea asset security. The penny has dropped that there is a real threat to the out-of-sight ocean assets that all of us rely on so heavily. From a DEI and wider Durham University point of view, this will become a rich area of research opportunity. The signals at a U.K., US and European level are that significant budgets will be made available to address this rapidly emerging challenge. I will feed in to DEI as the evidence builds."