Interview with Asger Hansen, CEO, Havsans IVS

We spoke to Asger Hansen, CEO, Havsans IVS, who has received support from Climate KIC to accelerate the development of Havsans. 

What’s your role?

I am a physicist and a coastal engineer specialising in coastal processes such as wave dynamics, hydrodynamics and sediment transport. Before starting my Ph.D. I worked as a consulting engineer at DHI in Denmark, mainly being involved in projects on coastal erosion.

What are you working on with Climate KIC?

I realised that there was both a need and a potential for developing low-cost instruments for measuring waves and currents in the sea. Such measurements are done using extremely expensive instruments and this puts an important limit on the amount of data which is collected. So, I formulated a Ph.D. project around this topic and Climate-KIC provided the main part of the funding. The project was quite successful as I managed to develop a very low-cost instrument capable of measuring wave and current conditions as well as variations of the level of the seabed. I have recently started my company Havsans which will be providing low-cost modular field instruments for the marine environment. At the moment, we are supplying instruments to measure waves, water levels and currents but we hope to expand so that we can provide instruments to measure a wide range of environmental parameters.

What are three implications of this work?

With such low-cost instruments, researchers would be able to conduct a larger number of – and more ambitious – field experiments which would increase our knowledge of the marine environment. Furthermore, administrators and NGOs would be better able to monitor parameters in the sea so as to document their current state and also any changes that might occur.

What or who gives you hope or inspiration in the fight against climate change?

As a coastal engineer, you tend to work a lot for harbours and oil companies which is not very satisfying if you are worried about the environment and the climate. I see Havsans as my chance to use my skills to help mitigate and manage our impacts on the Earth.