Aerial intelligence

While the USV fleet covers the waterline and below, an equally significant transformation is taking place above it. Jan De Nul has integrated aerial drones – uncrewed aerial vehicles – into its day- to-day operations across a remarkably broad range of applications. The common thread running through all of them is the same: faster data acquisition, greater accuracy and a quality of spatial overview that previously could not be achieved at this speed and cost.

On active construction and dredging sites, drone-based topographic mapping has become a standard tool for site management. Where a traditional ground survey of a large reclamation area or a coastal construction site might take a survey team several days of fieldwork to complete, a drone flight covering the same area can be planned, executed and processed into a georeferenced orthomosaic or a dense point cloud within a single working day. This task would have previously required a labour- intensive ground campaign with more conventional topographic equipment.

That speed of acquisition is not merely a convenience – it directly enables better decision-making on site. Project managers and works supervisors can track fill placement progress, verify earthwork volumes, monitor dredge spoil containment and compare as- built conditions against design levels on a near-continuous basis throughout a campaign. It provides an additional level of operational oversight and situational awareness that can otherwise be lost on the larger projects. There are, however, projects and restricted areas where drone flights are prohibited. In those cases, project teams are often disappointment to fall back on traditional measurement methods.

Offshore, drones are proving their value in the inspection of monopile foundations and offshore wind infrastructure.

Accessing a monopile structure for inspection is a hazardous, time-consuming operation that requires a suitable CTV, rope- access specialists and suitable weather windows. A drone equipped with a high-resolution camera and stabilised gimbal can survey the entire above-water extent of a monopile – including the transition piece, anodes and weld seams – in a fraction of the time, without personnel working at height and no interruption to nearby installation activities.

The same capability extends to the inspection of quay walls, breakwaters, bridge structures and other civil assets where access is difficult or dangerous. Detailed visual records captured by drone provide a timestamped archive that supports long-term maintenance planning and asset management.

Looking ahead, Jan De Nul is actively developing a drone- in-a-box concept for deployment in combination with remote processing centres. The principle is straightforward but powerful: a fully automated drone station, permanently installed at a site that can launch, execute a pre-programmed inspection or mapping flight and return to recharge – all without a human operator on location. Data is transmitted directly to onshore processing teams in near real time, enabling continuous monitoring of assets that are too remote or too costly to staff permanently.

Jan De Nul robotic survey fleet:

• Beluga 01: Mariner-class USV, offshore hydrographic and environmental survey, hybrid propulsion, 30 km range, Luxembourg flag.
• Vaquita 01–07: Otter-class USVs, shallow-water and inland survey, fully electric, multibeam echosounder and multi- sensor payloads.
• UAV fleet: aerial drones for topographic progress survey, volumetric analysis, structural inspection and site monitoring.

Beyond the surface

Jan De Nul is also exploring the potential of autonomous underwater vehicles for biological monitoring – an area where reducing human intervention is as much an ecological consideration as an operational one. The company is currently conducting trials with a compact Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) platform purpose-built for shallow- to medium-depth underwater operations, assessing its suitability for monitoring mussel, oyster and coral growth on subsea structures. Fitted with a sidescan sonar and a high-resolution camera system, the AUV navigates pre- planned transects, collecting acoustic and visual data without disturbing the ecosystems it is there to document.

The sidescan sonar provides wide- swath coverage that allows analysts to distinguish biological colonisation patterns from bare substrate, while the camera imagery delivers the close-up detail needed to identify species, assess coverage density and track growth between survey campaigns. Operating on battery power with no exhaust emissions and a minimal acoustic footprint, the platform is inherently less disruptive to sensitive marine habitats than a crewed dive operation or a conventional survey vessel working near a reef structure.

Results from the ongoing test programme are being used to validate data quality against reference diver surveys and to build the case for routine, low-impact biological monitoring across Jan De Nul's dredging and offshore energy portfolio.

People, technology and the road ahead

Introducing robotic platforms into an operational survey department is not simply a question of purchasing equipment. It requires investment in training, in procedures and in the organisational trust that allows people to rely on a system they cannot physically touch. Jan De Nul's approach has been step by step: each platform was validated in controlled conditions before live deployment, with survey engineers centrally involved in defining the operating procedures from the outset. That investment in people and process is what transforms a promising technology into a dependable operational tool – and it is the foundation on which the next phase of the programme is being built.

The regulatory landscape for USV operations is evolving in parallel. Standards bodies, including IMCA and major classification societies, are actively developing guidance for unmanned survey vessels and Jan De Nul contributes to those discussions – bringing real operational experience to a conversation that benefits from it. Regulatory maturity and operational maturity tend to reinforce each other and as both advance, the case for expanding the scope and ambition of remote survey operations grows stronger.

The question Jan De Nul is now asking is not simply whether a USV can collect data reliably – the fleet has answered that convincingly across hundreds of operational hours. The question is how the people who operate, monitor and interpret that data can do so most effectively, and increasingly the answer points away from the vessel and towards purpose-built facilities on shore. The next logical step in the evolution of the programme is the transition to dedicated Remote Operating Centres: shore-based facilities from which a surveyor or operator can log into a USV anywhere in the world, monitor its sensor streams in real time, adjust mission parameters and intervene when needed, without ever leaving the building.

This shift has profound implications for how survey teams are structured and deployed. Rather than rotating personnel through offshore assignments for weeks at a time – with all the cost, fatigue and personal disruption that entails – a surveyor and operator at a Remote Operating Centre can oversee multiple concurrent USV deployments across different project sites, switching between vessels as operational demands require. The expertise of the most experienced surveyors becomes a shared resource rather than a scarce one tied to a single geographic location. Project coverage becomes more consistent, response times to data quality issues improve and the overall resilience of the survey operation increases significantly.

Alongside remote operations, Jan De Nul is investing in dedicated data-processing capacity that mirrors this centralised model. Rather than processing survey data locally on a vessel or at a project site, centralised processing centres allow specialised teams to handle quality control, data validation and deliverable production for multiple projects simultaneously – applying consistent standards and drawing on a broader pool of expertise than any single site team can offer.

Taken together, the move towards Remote Operating Centres and centralised processing represents a natural continuation of the same commitment that drove the original investment in the USV and drone fleet: keeping people safe, running operations as efficiently as possible, and reducing the environmental cost of every survey campaign Jan De Nul undertakes. The platforms have proven themselves in the field. Now the focus is on building the infrastructure, the workflows and the organisational culture that allow their full potential to be realised.