Fugro Builds an AI Survey Hub in Singapore, With Government Money Behind It

Fugro is expanding its Singapore technology hub into an AI-driven marine survey platform, backed by grant funding from the Singapore Economic Development Board.

What it does is pull together things that normally sit in separate boxes: geophysical survey, geotechnical boreholes, laboratory results and imagery, all into one model of the seabed. Machine learning does the joining up and much of the first-pass analysis, which is work currently done by hand and takes weeks. Fugro says its wider GeoAI framework can deliver some hazard, habitat and infrastructure analysis up to ten times faster than the conventional route. The company is hiring locally in AI, data science and digital engineering, and plans to scale the platform across Asia Pacific.

"As offshore projects become increasingly complex, the ability to turn data into actionable insights is more important than ever," said Safri Drahman, regional line director for marine site characterisation.

Why this reaches beyond survey work: seabed data is the input to cable routes, anchor design, jack-up positioning and wind farm layout. If the ground model arrives weeks earlier, every decision downstream of it moves earlier too. That is a real schedule saving, and for anyone in offshore it is worth more than another dashboard.

No investment figure, no grant amount, no timeline, no customers. "Up to ten times faster" is the company's own number for some tasks, not all of them, and it is speed rather than accuracy. Faster analysis of the wrong ground model is not progress. [Splash247]

This story is part of the Maritime AI Digest of 6 September 2026.