3DEO and Belfast Harbour: A Partnership for Digital Estate Development
3DEO and Belfast Harbour
a partnership for digital estate development
key results
- On-going digitisation of one of the UK's largest and busiest Ports
- Development of more cost effective dredging management using Active Maps Bathymetry module
The Principal port for Northern Ireland, Belfast Harbour covers an area of 2,000 acres, representing 20% of Belfast City area and handles more than 70% of seaborne trade for the Region. The Harbour Estate is home to both commercial and residential real estate, and houses a diverse community of businesses in sectors such as financial and IT services, R&D, film production, engineering, and aerospace manufacturing.
future proofing belfast harbour
The team at Belfast Harbour, dedicated to future-proofing the Port and it’s diverse operations, are using technology to lead the way in sustainability, Health & Safety, efficiency and cost effectiveness. The ongoing development of their business relationship with 3DEO and the Active Maps product aims to fulfil a significant part of the organisation’s digital transformation journey.
Working together over several years the Active Maps product has evolved and the visualisation capabilities of the platform significantly improved, providing more than just immersive imagery but beneficial tooling to support Belfast Harbour in its daily business functions.
Initially setting out to map and visualise underground cable and pipe networks for telecoms and utilities the Belfast Harbour Estate in Active Maps has developed over the last few years to show a wide variety of fixed assets including buildings, utilities, berths and bollards.
increasing efficiences in costly dredging
The Bathymetry module has also been added to the Estate visualisations, one of our most beneficial functions for the maritime market. Belfast Harbour ingest their multi-beam survey data into the visualisation engine of Active Maps which shows water depth at specific geo-spatial location points. Once in Active Maps the data can be combined with historical data for time-series analysis and a clear view of areas of sediment build-up, helping to efficiently plan the costly dredging operations on site.
Active Maps has been invaluable in helping us to make the most of the data that’s already available to us, turning the data into useful information that positively impacts the business daily and helps us to define our strategy moving forward. As a platform Active Maps remains user-friendly and easily digestible, something that is important to us as a business with stakeholders from so many different industries. We’re excited to move forward with our Digital Estate and develop our understanding further.
the next phase of digitisation at belfast harbour
The next phase of works with Belfast Harbour looks to expand the digital twin further, adding dynamic data tracking, allowing for real-time visualisation of mobile assets. The overarching objectives for the project moving forward focusses on improving efficiencies, cost improvements, health and safety management and sustainability and environmental impact.
Primarily this project will give real-time visibility of mobile assets such as pilot boats, cranes and hoppers. Looking to longer term plans there are yet more possibilities to develop the ports digital estate and include functionality that gives greater data insights into the diverse tourist market at the port. Gathering data around tourist numbers, key visitor points and routes around the point area could be invaluable in developing service and commercial offering.
![](https://3deo.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/BT-Belfast-Harbour-1-1024x531.png)