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Space@Sea: Maarten Flikkema - Interview

Interview with the coordinator of the EU project Space@Sea

As coordinator, Maarten Flikkema was instrumental in the success of the EU-funded Space@Sea project. The engineer from Amersfoort in the Netherlands has been working in the field of maritime project coordination for more than 15 years. For many years, he worked for the Dutch institute MARIN. In 2018, he founded his own consulting company called FBS.

GICON^®: Mr Flikkema - Space@Sea was completed in October - were all the goals you set yourself achieved?

Flikkema: I can answer this with a clear yes. The objective of the Space@Sea project was to develop a modular floating island approach to create new space in coastal area’s and at sea. Increasing population and shift of population to (coastal) cities increase the pressure on the land use of the coasts. Alternatives such as landfilling have a large environmental impact. With a floating solution the environmental impact is much less while simultaneously much more flexible allowing for gradual growth of the island. Space@Sea has achieved the design of a modular floating island concept which was demonstrated at model scale in the MARIN model testing facility. The concept design includes a concept for connecting the floaters to each other and a method of mooring the total island.

Where did you have to deviate from the original concept?

The original concept for the floating islands consisted of connected triangles. Following first use requirements from the use cases it became evident that a square shape is much more efficiency from a space utilisation use point of view. A study to the connection loads between the floaters showed limited differences in peak loads between the square and triangle shapes. One of the key conclusions of the project regarding modularity is that we probably should not focus to much on standardizing the module shapes and size but focus on standardizing the locations of the connectors and the deck height above the water. In this was much more flexibility is created regarding the applications.

When will floating islands become reality?

Technically at present floating islands are possible, that is what the Space@Sea project has shown. Probably the current technical solution is still too expensive and further developments, and first application experience will lead to further reduction of costs. Current barriers are on governance, regulations and health and safety issues. Especially governance issues relating to multi-use islands needs to be considered such as who will be the owner and what rules apply on the island? Single-use islands have less barriers if these are working islands. Living on a floating islands require further developments of rules and regulations.

Will there be a follow-up project?

At this moment several partners are working on multiple follow-up actions applying for national funding and EU funding. These initiatives are focusing on single use floating islands for support of offshore wind generations and on rural extension in protected waters.

This Interview was published in GICONcret III/2020