Infrastructure inspection
Underwater infrastructure can be many things. It can be a water inlet for a hydroacoustic power station in the Swiss Alps or the pilings of a wind turbine base in the North Sea.
Regardless of where the underwater infrastructure is though, the systems required to monitor it must be as accurate as they are cost-effective and dependable.
Utility companies, port authorities and offshore contractors can choose to either deploy a team of divers to manually inspect their infrastructure, or take a less hands on, but safer and more cost-effective approach by deploying Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV) or Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) installed with bathymetric and side-scan sonar.
The GeoSwath 4 system, which can be deployed on surface vehicles (including uncrewed vessels), or underwater vehicles is used commonly in pre-survey mapping to define the areas of interest and also during inspections directly, due to its ability to provide side-scan sonar data.
While not a dedicated underwater inspection sonar, many customers experience that GeoSwath 4 can provide actionable data on i.e., scouring at the base of submerged structures which can lead to instabilities that need to be addressed.
