SEABIRD: System for Environmental Assessment of Bird/Bat Interactions with Real-Time Detection

Project Summary

Multi-scale monitoring technology reduces wildlife impact uncertainties for offshore wind development

Integral Consulting partnered with the California Energy Commission to develop SEABIRD, an innovative monitoring system that addresses critical knowledge gaps about bird and bat interactions with offshore wind technologies. This comprehensive solution integrates three technological scales—macroscale radar, mesoscale thermal imaging, and microscale collision detection—to provide real-time wildlife monitoring capabilities that help minimize non-technical project risks before energy offtake agreements.

Challenge

Knowledge of bird and bat interactions with offshore wind technologies over multiple scales is a critical knowledge gap.

Our Role

Integral led development of an integrated three-scale monitoring system that provides unprecedented real-time wildlife detection capabilities.

As technical lead for this California Energy Commission-funded project, Integral assembled a multidisciplinary team including H.T. Harvey & Associates, DeTect Inc., Sightir Inc., Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, GE Vernova, Velvetwire, and Sandia National Laboratories. Our team designed and implemented SEABIRD’s innovative architecture: marine S-band pulsed Doppler 3D radars for macroscale monitoring (2-8 km range), ThermalTracker-3D imaging systems for mesoscale target identification, and structural health monitoring systems for microscale blade strike detection.

What We're Delivering

SEABIRD’s phased development will deliver comprehensive monitoring capabilities, with real-time detection systems currently in development.

The system architecture integrates three complementary scales of monitoring. At the macroscale, marine radar systems track presence/absence, relative abundance, passage rates, flight heights, and flight direction with 360° coverage to 2-3 km and 90° coverage to 6-8 km. The mesoscale ThermalTracker-3D imagers provide flight trajectory with feature extraction for species-level identification based on shape, size, and flight behavior. The microscale component uses structural health monitoring to detect and characterize blade strike events through models calibrated and validated on actual turbine blades.

Looking forward: Our team is currently developing the real-time detection capabilities across all three scales, with AI-powered automatic identification systems. The long-term data collection protocols we’re establishing will generate critical datasets on areal density, hourly passage rates, daily distribution patterns, and flight height distributions. These technological innovations will reduce uncertainties about wildlife impacts, helping developers minimize project delays, optimize offshore operations for wildlife protection, and provide the evidence base needed for regulatory approvals and stakeholder engagement.