Following an exciting evening at this year’s Decom Mission awards, hosted in Aberdeen, Scotland, we are pleased to announce that OSC’s long-time collaborator, and owner of NEBA Analytics LLC, Joseph Nicolette, was awarded the Decom Mission 2025 “Innovation in decommissioning award”, for their continued contributions to revolutionary research methods, and their refinement of the Net Environmental Benefits Analysis with Comparative Assessment (NEBA-CA) framework within the decommissioning industry.
‘A framework for a net environmental benefit analysis based comparative assessment of decommissioning options for anthropogenic subsea structures: A North Sea case study’ (Nicolette et al., 2023) was published in Frontiers in Marine Science in early 2023. The publication has received more than 6,000 views and downloads as of 2nd June 2025, with these numbers only continuing to increase. This represents a 78% higher view count than similar papers on the same platform, highlighting the applicability and necessity for frameworks such as this NEBA-CA within our current decommissioning environment.
OSC Managing Director and Chief Scientist, Dr Victoria Todd, made significant contributions to the progress of this publication, through further collaborations with Dr Nicolette and by sharing of her wealth of knowledge and expertise on the topic of decommissioning strategies and environmental benefit analyses.
This paper presents a novel method of a multiple-criteria decision analysis through means of a NEBA-CA framework and applies this approach in the context of various decommissioning strategies utilised throughout the world, in particular with a case study of a decommissioning process in the North Sea. It goes on to discuss how this framework supplements the widespread CA approach to further enhance decision-making capabilities and to better inform legislators and companies alike with regards to decommissioning options available to them. The publication can be read in full and free of charge here.
With further publications in review and scheduled to be released very shortly, watch this space to find the latest research in decommissioning strategies, impacts of offshore structures on marine life, and more updates from Ocean Science Consulting Limited!
