Working with funding from the R.I. Science and Technology Advisory Council and the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center, a team of scientists from private industry and academia are working to develop an undersea sensor and communication network useful both to oceanographers studying climate change and to defend against terrorist threats.
The project is a partnership of three ocean technology companies and the University of Rhode Island, who are working to integrate their respective products into a new commercial system for continuous coastal and undersea observation, said Alfred Hanson, president of Jamestown-based SubChem Systems Inc. and the principal investigator on the project.
SubChem Systems, a spinoff from URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography, develops and markets underwater chemical and nutrient analyzers. Narragansett-based Applied Science Associates Inc., another URI spinoff, develops environmental software for displaying and managing ocean data. And WET Labs Inc., which has offices in both Oregon and Narragansett, makes optical instruments and autonomous profilers.
“All of us have had state and federal funding to develop this technology to a certain level, sort of independently, and it’s come to the time where we want to try and really integrate these different systems that have been developed into a single operational system,” Hanson said.
The team is integrating its Ocean Response Coastal Analysis System – autonomous underwater vehicles and other technology and devices used to monitor undersea conditions and collect environmental data – with an advanced underwater network that uses acoustics to communicate under water and radio to communicate above, Hanson said.
The wireless underwater sensor network will then be connected with COASTMAP, a program made by Applied Science Associates, enabling researchers on land to communicate with the underwater devices, and the devices to communicate with one another, he said.
“Other people have been doing this also,” Hanson said. “The networking technology is just becoming very useful. But what we have is some pretty novel sensors and autonomous profilers on AUVs that we’re putting together with this underwater network, and then the information that’s collected will be sent to the Internet to … COASTMAP, and that software will process the data and make data products, maps and figures that explain what’s going on in the environment down there.
“The idea is the information will come in, and instructions may be able to go back out automatically for one of the vehicles to do a survey or go somewhere else and take a look there, that type of thing,” he continued.
The coastal observation technology platform will get its first test this summer, when the research team uses it in upper Narragansett Bay to investigate why oxygen levels in the water have been depleted in recent summers, resulting in fish and shellfish kills and unusually extensive algae blooms.
The autonomous sampling platforms, sensors, networking and data management and informational technologies being developed by the team will enable students and faculty at URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography to more easily conduct research in Narragansett Bay, Hanson said.
At the same time, the technology system would aid the military in its defense of the nation’s coastline, he said. Eventually, the companies hope to market the new technology system to the U.S. Coast Guard, Navy, Environmental Protection Agency, as well as universities and other ocean and environmental research groups.
“It’s a dual-use technology,” Hanson said. “The same technology [used to monitor oxygen levels in Narragansett Bay] can be used to for maritime security, surveillance, looking for underwater intruders such as divers and underwater vehicles that may have some intent to do harm.”
