Drones Monitoring Ship Emissions in the Baltic Sea

A fleet of high-tech specialized aerial drones will be deployed to monitor emissions from commercial ships in the Baltic Sea.

Scheduled to kick off later this month, the large-scale campaign is being led by Germany's the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency, together with the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA).

Over a three-month period, specially equipped remotely piloted aircraft will take off from the German Armed Forces' Staberhuk site on the east coast of Fehmarn and fly over selected ships operating in the Fehmarn Belt and the Kadetrinne/Kadetrenden to measure the sulphur content of their exhaust plumes. In this way, it will be possible to infer the sulphur content of the ship’s fuel, which must not exceed a level of 0.10% in the Baltic Sea Emission Control Area (SECA).

The measurement results will be made available in real time to responsible authorities in all European ports via THETIS-EU, the Port State Control information system operated by EMSA, so that ships can be specifically selected for inspection at their next port of call and samples of the fuel can be taken. If violations of the strict sulphur limits can be proven, those responsible face heavy penalties.

In addition to ship exhaust gas measurements, multispectral aerial imagery will be acquired. For shallow waters, bathymetric values can be extracted from images. Furthermore, imagery allows for three-dimensional mapping of the shore zone. The drone survey campaign will investigate whether aerial imagery can provide complementary information for the German hydrographic surveying service.

The drone flights are operated by the Norwegian company Nordic Unmanned on behalf of EMSA. The sensor technology and analysis capabilities for the emission measurements is supplied by the Danish company Explicit ApS.