As Sund & Bælt, which plans, constructs, and operates some of Denmark’s largest infrastructure projects, undertakes the task of investigating large infrastructure projects, it involves the collection of thousands of environmental data points in the project areas.
Increased knowledge about the water environment
Now, Sund & Bælt will be the first major client in the country to make collected water environment data available in the national database, VanDa. VanDa is a publicly accessible database for all water environment data hosted by the Danish Environmental Portal.
– It is our daily ambition to document and collect data on our projects to ensure transparency for all involved parties. VanDa can help increase knowledge and awareness of the water environment, and it is an exciting opportunity for knowledge sharing that we are very keen to contribute to, says Christina Berlin Hovmand, Environmental and Regulatory Director at Sund & Bælt, in a press release.
Starting with the Eastern Ring Road
Initially, data from the ongoing environmental impact assessment of an Eastern Ring Road, being studied as an immersed tunnel along the eastern coast of Amager, will provide the data. Sund & Bælt hopes the initiative will inspire others in the industry.
– We have encouraged our consultants to use VanDa, so together we can promote the societal value found in knowledge sharing. It is resource-intensive to conduct thorough and extensive data collections, so it is an economic gain for society that we can reuse existing data in VanDa for future use, says Christina Berlin Hovmand, explaining that knowledge sharing also contributes to improved data quality:
The more, the better
– The more data made available, the better the basis and thus the higher the quality achieved concerning the decisions that need to be made based on data, she says.
Specifically, Sund & Bælt’s collected water environment data includes measurements of water quality, eelgrass, benthic fauna, and algae.
