IROE student, Cedric Muscat presents at Thalassa 2024 – Marine Science Conference in Larnaca, Cyprus
Cedric Muscat, an undergraduate project student in the civil engineering program who carried out his final year research project under the supervision of IROE’s Dr Hugo Putuhena and Professor Susan Gourvenec, presenting the project outcomes at the Marine Science Conference, “Thalassa” held 28-29th May 2024.
The conference was held in person in Larnaca, Cyprus and attended by about a hundred marine experts and stakeholders from academia, research institutes, industry, NGOs, and the public sectors, to provide insights that can be used to tackle current ocean hot topics in the regional context.
On the first day of the conference, Cedric shared the outcomes of his project thesis in the “Marine and Coastal Governance” session, which was titled ‘Identifying suitable locations for offshore wind through GIS analysis; a regional case study’. His analysis revealed that over 40% of the Maltese waters are available for future offshore wind sites, particularly in deep water (>60m) necessitating floating technology. Utilising just a tenth of this space could produce 7 times Malta’s peak energy demand. The study also highlighted challenges, including a scarcity of sediment data and up to 60% of the available space poses significant engineering challenges, including very deep water >200m and/or rocky seabed close to the surface.
The slides of Cedric’s presentation can be downloaded here .
