BSc, PhD
Interdisciplinary Fellow
- About
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- Email Address
- kate.gormley@abdn.ac.uk
- Telephone Number
- +44 (0)1224 272693
- Office Address
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103 National Decommissioning Centre North Building
National Decommissioning Centre Campus
Newburgh
AB41 6AA
- More Contact Information
- School/Department
- School of Biological Sciences
Biography
Kate is an interdisciplinary researcher specialising in coastal and marine environmental management. Her extensive work encompasses a wide range of areas including offshore renewables, oil and gas, decommissioning, marine and coastal conservation, marine spatial planning, ports and shipping, marine and coastal visualisation and participatory planning with stakeholders.
Kate has worked with the marine energy industry, with a focus on environmental impacts through various industry roles, industry working groups, placements and academic positions, and is highly skilled in industry/academic knowledge exchange and understanding research impact.
Kate’s current research focusses on the development of tools for marine energy decision making (e.g., vessel analysis for decommissioning); and visualisation tools for stakeholder engagement (e.g., participatory planning apps for coastal land use change and green port transitions).
Interdisciplinary Research and Innovation Symposium 2024
Hosted by the Interdisciplinary Institute, we invite staff and students to join the Interdisciplinary Research and Innovation Symposium on Wednesday 4 September. The event will provide an exciting opportunity to highlight the latest developments in interdisciplinary research and innovation taking case studies from across the University of Aberdeen. To submit an abstract (deadline 16 August) or register to attend visit our event page.
External Memberships
- Member - JNCC's Big Picture Working Group
- Member – Society for Underwater Technology (SUT) Salvage and Decommissioning Committee
- Member – SUT Decommissioning Working Group
- Member – Productive Seas Evidence Group (UK Marine Science and Coordination Committee)
- Member - MASTS Oil and Gas Environmental Research Forum
- Member - MASTS Planning and Governance Forum
- Research
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Research Overview
Kate's research interests include environmental aspects of the offshore energy industries (particularly environmental monitoring, policy and decommissioning); cumulative and environmental impact assessment; Marine Spatial Planning; GIS and spatial analysis; habitat mapping; Marine Protected Areas and Priority Marine Habitats management. Kate also has an interest in participatory mapping, and the development of mapping tools for use by a range of stakeholders and the development of visualisation tools.
Kate has an offshore energy industry background with over 20 years' experience, working directly within the industry operators, consultancies and regulators, and academia. Kate is particularly interested in Knowledge Exchange between industries, academia and the engagement of stakeholders.
Current Research
Interdisciplinary Research Fellowship, (2023-Present), University of Aberdeen: "Energy Transition" and "Environment and Biodiversity" Themes. Designing and developing practical visualisation tolls to support and improve decision making for marine and coastal environments.
Data for Net Zero, (2022-Present), Scottish Government/NZTC: Working across the project work packages to procure, process, analyse and visualisation environmental and marine energy related data, particularly shipping AIS data.
Past Research
Connectivity of Hard Substrate Assemblages in the North Sea (2020-2023), NERC/INSITE: The aim of this project is to enhance our understanding of the connectivity of epifauna populations across artificial substrata in the North Sea. The CHASANS Project will deliver improved larval connectivity models necessary to provide guidance on decommissioning and derogation of artificial structures in the North Sea. Ground-truthing studies will be employed to validate models by collecting data on larval behaviours, including transport, seasonality and life-cycling, and settlement succession from several epifaunal species, and to assess genetic connectivity between hard substrata populations. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION
“Enhanced Physical Internet-Compatible Earth-frieNdly freight Transportation answer (ePIcenter)”, (2020-2023), Horizon 2020: study of the impact of shipping on marine mammals in the Arctic. The “Arctic" Demonstrator focuses on Wildlife-Friendly Arctic Shipping & Sustainable New Logistics Routes, testing the ePIcenter methodologies and solutions that reduce impact of logistics operations on the environment from increased understanding driven by AI and Big Data technologies.
“Scanning the Horizon: identifying challenges, knowledge gaps and opportunities for sustainable development of port infrastructure for the Arctic’s Shipping Routes” Scottish Government Arctic Connections Fund 2021-2022.
Knowledge Exchange Fellowship (2014-22), NERC: Kate's fellowship will look at the challenges currently facing the offshore oil and gas industry and how environmental data generated by both academia and industry can be managed effectively. Kate is also involved in number of industry and academic knowledge exchange activities, particularly focussing on decommissioning challenges and environmental management, through membership of various industry and academic working groups. Kate hosted a Design for Decommissioning workshop in 2018 and she will be aiming to host more industry/academic workshops in the future. Kate has recently completed work on an online mapping portal for offshore environmental surveys, Oil & Gas Environment Interactive.
Marine Growth Analysis on Decommissioning Offshore Installations (2016-17), NERC Oil & Gas Decommissioning Innovation: This project is a scoping/proof of concept study and aims to use the method developed by the CoralNet project and applying it to survey footage from offshore platforms on the UKCS. The aim of the project is to train the software to identify the main marine growth species on UKCS platforms and to calculate their percentage cover.
Atlantic Innovation (2014-15), Heriot-Watt University, NERC Innovation: Environmental data management, specifically look at environmental monitoring and management issues to the west of Shetland.
North Sea Interactive (2014), Heriot-Watt University, NERC Innovation: North Sea Interactive translated marine environmental data into GIS Shapefiles for use by industry and academia.
Funding and Grants
2020-23 Connectivity of Hard Substrate Assemblages in the North Sea, NERC/INSITE
2016-17 Marine Growth Analysis on Decommissioning Offshore Installations, NERC (CO-I)
2014-22 Knowledge Exchange Fellowship (Oil and Gas), NERC (PI)
- Publications
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Page 1 of 2 Results 1 to 10 of 11
Bottom-up formulations for the multi-criteria decision analysis of oil and gas pipeline decommissioning in the North Sea: Brent field case study
Journal of Environmental Management, vol. 365, 121491Contributions to Journals: ArticlesA paradigm for understanding whole ecosystem effects of offshore wind farms in shelf seas
ICES Journal of Marine Science, pp. 1-12Contributions to Journals: ArticlesFirst port of call: a horizon scanning workshop for sustainable Arctic marine infrastructure
Polar Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 146-162Contributions to Journals: ArticlesGenetic Connectivity and Diversity of a Protected, Habitat-Forming Species: Evidence Demonstrating the Need for Wider Environmental Protection and Integration of the Marine Protected Area Network
Frontiers in Marine Science, vol. 9, 772259Contributions to Journals: ArticlesExpanding the role of participatory mapping to assess ecosystem service provision in local coastal environments
Ecosystem Services, vol. 39, 101009Contributions to Journals: ArticlesData challenges and opportunities for environmental management of North Sea oil and gas decommissioning in an era of blue growth
Marine Policy, vol. 97, pp. 130-138Contributions to Journals: ArticlesAutomated Image Analysis of Offshore Infrastructure Marine Biofouling
Journal of Marine Science and Engineering , vol. 6, no. 1, 2Contributions to Journals: ArticlesConnectivity and Dispersal Patterns of Protected Biogenic Reefs: Implications for the Conservation of Modiolus modiolus (L.) in the Irish Sea
PloS ONE, vol. 10, no. 12, e0143337Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143337
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Adaptive management, international co-operation and planning for marine conservation hotspots in a changing climate
Marine Policy, vol. 53, pp. 54-66Contributions to Journals: ArticlesCan management effort be predicted for marine protected areas? New considerations for network design
Marine Policy, vol. 47, pp. 138-146Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2014.01.021