Optioneer

Optioneer is Continuum Industries' cloud-based planning platform for linear infrastructure: overhead, underground and subsea electricity transmission, and water, gas, hydrogen and CO2 pipelines. Early-stage routing and siting studies traditionally depend on manual GIS work and examine only a few options, so constraints often surface late in development.

Optioneer combines a pre-loaded geospatial library with infrastructure asset models and multi-objective optimisation. The provider states that its specialists have collated and formatted 13,000+ datasets from over 600 sources covering the US, UK and Europe, organised into 20 layer topics that include topography and land use & land cover. The sources shown for Europe include the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (spaceborne radar elevation) and the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service. Users can also upload their own data. The engine generates corridors, routes and site options, scores them on cost, environmental and social impact and technical feasibility, and compares them using weighted ranking, red-amber-green assessment and Pareto trade-off analysis. It drafts reports such as EIA screening, crossing schedules and permitting matrices, and provides 3D terrain visualisation.

The platform is sold in two editions, Optioneer for Screening and Optioneer for Development. Published customers include National Gas, SSEN Transmission, EDF, Vitens, Southern Water and NGN; a Network Innovation Allowance project led by National Gas Transmission (then National Grid Gas), published on the Energy Networks Association's innovation portal, reported a 93% reduction in the time needed to arrive at a pipeline corridor on a 10km scheme. Continuum Industries lists ISO 9001, ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II.