Re-membering the Bard: Revisiting The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged)...
RIWC_Adrian Went presentation
1. Click to edit Madfg d title styleEnter your text here…
Griffon Hoverwork
Hovercraft for disaster
response
2. Click to edit Madfg d title styleEnter your text here…Hovercraft can reach locations inaccessible to boats
Shallow Water Transition Zone
Rapids
Marshland / Water Plants
IceNo infrastructure
Why hovercraft?
3. Click to edit Madfg d title styleEnter your text here…How does a hovercraft access the inacessible?
Accelerating
(10-15 Kts)
High speed (20 Kts +)
Low speed / Static
Displaced Water
• Planes over the surface
• Unaffected by obstacles / pollution in the
water
• Can access 60% more beaches than
conventional landing vessels
• Leaves flora / fauna in the water
untouched
• Simple and robust mechanical systems
• Extremely low footprint (1.1 atmospheres)
4. Click to edit Madfg d title styleEnter your text here…180 craft, 41 countries – primary or secondary disaster relief roles
5. Click to edit Madfg d title styleEnter your text here…Airport rescue
Changi Airport
Korean Coastguard
Auckland Airport
6. Click to edit Madfg d title styleEnter your text here…Tidal mud and ice rescue
7. Click to edit Madfg d title styleEnter your text here…Oil spill response
8. Click to edit Madfg d title styleEnter your text here…Logistic and conservation support
Changi Airport
9. Click to edit Madfg d title styleEnter your text here…Medical and evacuation
10. Click to edit Madfg d title styleEnter your text here…Flood rescue
1/6 cost of
helicopter
11. Click to edit Madfg d title styleEnter your text here…Flood rescue
Editor's Notes
- the organisers asked me to provide a presentation on the hovercraft designed and manufactured by Griffon Hoverwork because
- they are a practical tool that are used all over the world in disaster response
- but they are not well understood
- therefore this could stimulate some thought amongst the delegates
Hovering on a cushion of air, the hovercraft can travel over a variety of surfaces, all year round, in all water levels and reliably move your personnel and equipment at high speed to where they are needed for operations. Surfaces include: i.e. land, sand, mud, swamps, rocks, ice, etc. Climates can be arctic to tropical. Air and water can be polluted or pure – and the operation of the hovercraft itself won’t cause environmental deterioration.
Hovercraft do not require any complicated infrastructure for operations. They can carry payloads of people or freight from small teams of 6 to 200 passengers or about 1Tonne to 500 Tonnes or more. The technology can also be applied to moving structures such as storage tanks to relocate tank farms. Designs are also in progress for moving LNG up waterways to give clean energy sources to remote communities.
critical to understand that the hovercraft planes over the surface and that way it can transition from water to land and is not effected by shallows or obstacles
Note the picture in the lower right hand corner, this is taken from underneath the skirt and you can actually sea daylight shining in throught the small gap between the bottom edge of the flexible structure and the surface underneath
experience from applications of over 180 craft in operation with over 40 countries in a wide variety of climatic, geographical, economic and security conditions
Note the areas where hovercraft are particularly applicable
Ice areas – and at a time of global warming areas where the ice is receding
Jungle / tropical / riverine areas
Island nations
Areas where the tidal range is particularly significant (like S Korea)
search and rescue
- inter-tidal zone
- ice or marsh
- shallow / marsh areas in airport jurisdiction
- excellent platform for launching or controlling rescue operations including specialist swimmer and rpv.
By virtue of its cushion, it travels high above the surface but when it comes off cushion it does not have high freeboard so recovering casualties or loading freight is made much easier
search and rescue
- intertidal zone
- ice or marsh
- areas where there is no prepared launching or recovery facility or a dockside or jetty
quick reaction capping solution / damming off immediate area. Two traditional problems are:
Long travel distances & travel times to scene of the disaster, and
Long response times which increases oil / gas loss, pollution and consequently clean up and litigation costs
In Nigeria’s delta, the features are
70,000 sq km area of oil and gas pipes criss-crossing uncharted, tidal and increasingly unnavigable waterways as they silt up
The limited access by small conventional vessels becomes the advantage to hovercraft; by using pipeline routes as hovercraft super-highways, reducing travel distances and response times, and increasing relative endurance on task
versatile platform that can be equipped with ro-ro or crane gear
The background of this picture shows typical south american jungle terrain that cannot be accessed by land – hovercraft can access unprepared sites and regions of the river that vary in depth across the seasons down to no water at all
We already have craft in operation in Peru, Colombia and Venezula and with Hover-aid in Madagascar and other areas in Africa
Critically we are planning with The UK and Colombia governments to provide an outreach medical and social care service based on hovercraft that will make an immediate difference to the population as peace replaces the enduring war in Colombia
- Hovercraft really come into their own in significant flood rescue situations
- significantly cheaper and with more capacity than helicopters
- unaffected by varying water depth, speed of movement of water and by obstacles floating in the water
I’ll leave you with this self explanatory news film clip