Charlotte Garmann-Johnsen | January 22nd, 2025 | Stories

INTERVIEW with Ragnvald Larsen, senior advisor at the Norwegian Environment Agency, the executive body of the Ministry of Environment.   

Q: Can you introduce yourself, what you do and how you are involved in the project?   I have worked at the Norwegian Environment Agency for 16 years. I work with environmental management, which involves taking care of (mostly marine) data, disseminating, processing data and analyses. Among other things, I have worked on data sets and services related to marine spatial planning and emergency preparedness. I am also responsible for analysis related to drones. I was part of initiative for the Norwegian Environment Agency to have drones in-house and to start using them more systematically. I had operational responsibility for 5 years and am now responsible for image analysis. I have followed the SeaBee from the start and sat in the reference group.  I have used the SeaBee infrastructure indirectly through NIVA and NINA in projects and am happy to see that they have increased their professionalism in terms of equipment and expertise.  

Q: What type of data maintenance do you do?   

I have worked on the Norwegian Coastal Administration’s priority map, as well as the environmental value product that goes to Barentswatch. Both are actually aggregated products based on other datasets. The purpose is to create a basis for emergency preparedness work to the extent that an accident occurs in a coastal area. I also work with analysis of wilderness areas in both Svalbard and corresponding connected natural areas on mainland Norway.    

Q: You mentioned that you have responsibility for drones. Does this mean that the Norwegian Environment Agency has their own drone equipment?   

The Norwegian Nature Inspectorate is the only part of the Norwegian Environment Agency that has operational use of drones. They take the drones out into the field and take pictures or more systematic recordings that are processed to obtain orthophotos. All of which is relevant for monitoring. Our work is more concerned with building and developing methods and tools that are relevant to the knowledge base of politicians and other decision-makers.   

Q: Does the Norwegian Environment Agency rent equipment from SeaBee at all? How do you use the SeaBee project?  

We have used NIVA in the KELPMAP project. NIVA as suppliers of the study means that they use the SeaBee infrastructure and expertise. SeaBee has led to availability of equipment. Through this work they have gradually gained much better expertise in doing complex drone operations. They have worked systematically to achieve this. the development has been impressive, and they are now at a level way beyond what I am capable of doing with regards to drone operations and analysis.  

Q: Can you comment more specifically about which information and competencies that SeaBee has improved?   

They have developed good approaches to taking aerial images of coastal sub-surface areas. Factors such as the angle of the sun, time of the day and tides are critical factors for the camera angle are handled expertly. They have a much more systematic understanding of the weather conditions and how they affect the drones. So, they are now very good at planning fieldwork with drones. SeaBee is an integrated part of many organizations such as the Norwegian Computing Centraland NINA. They now have a common point of contact or reference point and plan for the tasks they have based on their expertise. I think it has been a good development, and it is not just about drone photography, but also processing images. They have also established an infrastructure for storing images. I am very happy with their development over these last years.    

Q: Is there anything else regarding Seabee’s usefulness and user groups that you would like to say?   

I would like to see SeaBee get another round of funding, because 70 million is not a lot of money in this industry. They now have both infrastructure and expertise needed in research and management.