Deployment characterization of a floatable tidal energy converter on a tidal channel, Ria Formosa, Portugal

This paper presents the results of a pilot experiment with an existing tidal energy converter (TEC), Evopod 1 kW floatable prototype, in a real test case scenario (Faro Channel, Ria Formosa, Portugal). A baseline marine geophysical, hydrodynamic and ecological study based on the experience collected on the test site is presented. The collected data was used to validate a hydro-morphodynamic model, allowing the selection of the installation area based on both operational and environmental constraints. Operational results related to the description of power generation capacity, energy capture area and proportion of energy flux are presented and discussed, including the failures occurring during the experimental setup. The data is now available to the scientific community and to TEC industry developers, enhancing the operational knowledge of TEC technology concerning efficiency, environmental effects, and interactions (i.e. device/environment). The results can be used by developers on the licensing process, on overcoming the commercial deployment barriers, on offering extra assurance and confidence to investors, who traditionally have seen environmental concerns as a barrier, and on providing the foundations whereupon similar deployment areas can be considered around the world for marine tidal energy extraction.Acknowledgements The paper is a contribution to the SCORE project, funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT e PTDC/ AAG-TEC/1710/2014). Andre Pacheco was supported by the Portu- guese Foundation for Science and Technology under the Portuguese Researchers' Programme 2014 entitled “Exploring new concepts for extracting energy from tides” (IF/00286/2014/CP1234). Eduardo GGorbena has received funding for the OpTiCA project from the ~ Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions of the European Union's H2020- MSCA-IF-EF-RI-2016/under REA grant agreement n [748747]. The authors would like to thank to the Portuguese Maritime Authorities and Sofareia SA for their help on the deployment.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Integrating Sensor-Network Research and Development into a Software Engineering Curriculum

The emergence of a sensor-networked world produces a clear and urgent need for well-planned, safe and secure software engineering. It is the role of universities to prepare graduates with the knowledge and experience to enter the work-force with a clear understanding of software design and its application to the future safety of computing. The snBench (Sensor Network WorkBench) project aims to provide support to the programming and deployment of Sensor Network Applications, enabling shared sensor embedded spaces to be easily tasked with various sensory applications by different users for simultaneous execution. In this report we discus our experience using the snBench research project as the foundation for semester-long project in a graduate level software engineering class at Boston University (CS511)

Supporting regional coastal and ocean managers: Linking ocean observing tools and capabilities to the priority needs of managers and users in the southeast region

Ocean observing has been recognized by the US Commission on Ocean Policy, the Ocean Research and Resources Advisory Panel, the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, and many other ocean policy entities and initiatives as foundational to meeting the nation’s need for more effective coastal and ocean management. The Interim Report of the Interagency Task Force on Ocean Policy (September 2009) has called for strengthening the nation’s capacity for observing the nation’s ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes systems. (PDF contains 3 pages

Wireless and Physical Security via Embedded Sensor Networks

Wireless Intrusion Detection Systems (WIDS) monitor 802.11 wireless frames (Layer-2) in an attempt to detect misuse. What distinguishes a WIDS from a traditional Network IDS is the ability to utilize the broadcast nature of the medium to reconstruct the physical location of the offending party, as opposed to its possibly spoofed (MAC addresses) identity in cyber space. Traditional Wireless Network Security Systems are still heavily anchored in the digital plane of "cyber space" and hence cannot be used reliably or effectively to derive the physical identity of an intruder in order to prevent further malicious wireless broadcasts, for example by escorting an intruder off the premises based on physical evidence. In this paper, we argue that Embedded Sensor Networks could be used effectively to bridge the gap between digital and physical security planes, and thus could be leveraged to provide reciprocal benefit to surveillance and security tasks on both planes. Toward that end, we present our recent experience integrating wireless networking security services into the SNBENCH (Sensor Network workBench). The SNBENCH provides an extensible framework that enables the rapid development and automated deployment of Sensor Network applications on a shared, embedded sensing and actuation infrastructure. The SNBENCH's extensible architecture allows an engineer to quickly integrate new sensing and response capabilities into the SNBENCH framework, while high-level languages and compilers allow novice SN programmers to compose SN service logic, unaware of the lower-level implementation details of tools on which their services rely. In this paper we convey the simplicity of the service composition through concrete examples that illustrate the power and potential of Wireless Security Services that span both the physical and digital plane.National Science Foundation (CISE/CSR 0720604, ENG/EFRI 0735974, CIES/CNS 0520166, CNS/ITR 0205294, CISE/ERA RI 0202067

A Pacific Ocean Legacy Embracing Tradition: Protecting 4 Million Square Kilometers of Pacific Waters by 2016

Ancient Polynesians used the sun, stars, and ocean swells to navigate the Pacific, the largest ocean on Earth with nearly half the world's marine waters. From west to east, they explored and settled a significant portion of the Pacific. Known as the Polynesian Triangle, this enormous swath of ocean has Hawaii at its northern point, while Easter Island and New Zealand mark its eastern and western boundaries, respectively. Pacific Island communities remain deeply connected to the ocean and uniquely attuned to the need to protect it. Embracing this tradition, Global Ocean Legacy, a project of The Pew Charitable Trusts and its partners, is collaborating with communities and governments across the Pacific to create a conservation legacy: the protection of 4 million square kilometers (1,544,400 square miles) of ocean waters by 2016 through the establishment of large, highly protected marine reserves. Around the world, Global Ocean Legacy works with local communities and indigenous peoples, fishermen, scientists, governments, and the business sector to honor and conserve critical ocean environments. Together, we are establishing the world's first generation of great marine parks

Modern Statistical Methods in Oceanography: A Hierarchical Perspective

Processes in ocean physics, air-sea interaction and ocean biogeochemistry span enormous ranges in spatial and temporal scales, that is, from molecular to planetary and from seconds to millennia. Identifying and implementing sustainable human practices depend critically on our understandings of key aspects of ocean physics and ecology within these scale ranges. The set of all ocean data is distorted such that three- and four-dimensional (i.e., time-dependent) in situ data are very sparse, while observations of surface and upper ocean properties from space-borne platforms have become abundant in the past few decades. Precisions in observations of all types vary as well. In the face of these challenges, the interface between Statistics and Oceanography has proven to be a fruitful area for research and the development of useful models. With the recognition of the key importance of identifying, quantifying and managing uncertainty in data and models of ocean processes, a hierarchical perspective has become increasingly productive. As examples, we review a heterogeneous mix of studies from our own work demonstrating Bayesian hierarchical model applications in ocean physics, air-sea interaction, ocean forecasting and ocean ecosystem models. This review is by no means exhaustive and we have endeavored to identify hierarchical modeling work reported by others across the broad range of ocean-related topics reported in the statistical literature. We conclude by noting relevant ocean-statistics problems on the immediate research horizon, and some technical challenges they pose, for example, in terms of nonlinearity, dimensionality and computing.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/13-STS436 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Hypsometry and Volume of the Arctic Ocean and Its Constituent Seas

This paper presents an analysis of the Arctic Ocean and its constituent seas for seafloor area distribution versus depth and ocean volume. The bathymetry from the International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO) is used together with limits defining this ocean and its constituent seas from the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) as well as redefined limits constructed to confine the seas to the shallow shelves. IBCAO is a bathymetric grid model with a resolution of 2.5 x 2.5 km, which significantly improved the portrayal of the Arctic Ocean seafloor through incorporation of newly released bathymetric data including echo soundings from U.S. and British navies, scientific nuclear submarine cruises, and icebreaker cruises. This analysis of seafloor area and ocean volume is the first for the Arctic Ocean based on this new and improved portrayal of the seafloor as represented by IBCAO. The seafloor area and volume are calculated for different depths starting from the present sea level and progressing in increments of 10 m to a depth of 500 m and in increments of 50 m from 550 m down to the deepest depth within each of the analyzed seas. Hypsometric curves expressed as simple histograms of the frequencies in different depth bins and depth plotted against cumulative area for each of the analyzed seas are presented. The area and volume calculations show that the entire IHO-defined Arctic Ocean makes up 4.3% of the total ocean area but only 1.4% of the volume. Furthermore, the IHO Arctic Ocean is the shallowest (mean depth 1201 m) of all the major oceans and their adjacent seas. The continental shelf area, from the coasts out to the shelf break, make up as much as 52.9% of the total area in the Arctic Ocean, defined in this work as consisting of the oceanic deep Arctic Ocean Basin; the broad continental shelves of the Barents, Kara, Laptev, East Siberian, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas; the White Sea; and the narrow continental shelf off both the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and northern Greenland. This result indicates that the Arctic Ocean has significantly larger continental shelves compared with all the other oceans, where previous studies show that the proportion of shelves, from the coasts out to the foot of the continental slopes, only ranges between about 9.1 and 17.7%. Furthermore, the derived hypsometric curves show that most of the Arctic Ocean shelf seas besides the Barents Sea, Beaufort Sea, and the shelf off northern Greenland have a similar shape, with the largest seafloor area between 0 and 50 m. The East Siberian and Laptev seas, in particular, show area distributions concentrated in this shallow depth range, and together with the Chukchi Sea they form a large flat shallow shelf province composing as much as 22% of the entire Arctic Ocean area but only 1% of the volume. This implies that the circulation in the Arctic Ocean might be very sensitive to eustatic sea level changes. One of the aims with this work is to make up-to-date high-resolution area and volume calculations for the Arctic Ocean at various depths available for download

Ocean Prosperity Roadmap

The Ocean Prosperity Roadmap: Fisheries and Beyond was a collection of research launched at the Economist's 2015 World Ocean Summit. It was designed to inform decision makers, including governments and investors, on effective ocean and coastal resource management strategies to maximize economic, conservation and societal benefits.This set of infographics was derived from the research collection, which demonstrated how governance and management reform can reduce poverty while achieving economic gains, increasing food production, replenishing fish and conserving ocean health for future generations. This is especially true in the case of wild capture fisheries. Taken together, the collection of seven studies creates a comprehensive overview of what's possible to achieve in the ocean economy and emerging best practices on how to get there

A Survey of Ocean Simulation and Rendering Techniques in Computer Graphics

This paper presents a survey of ocean simulation and rendering methods in computer graphics. To model and animate the ocean's surface, these methods mainly rely on two main approaches: on the one hand, those which approximate ocean dynamics with parametric, spectral or hybrid models and use empirical laws from oceanographic research. We will see that this type of methods essentially allows the simulation of ocean scenes in the deep water domain, without breaking waves. On the other hand, physically-based methods use Navier-Stokes Equations (NSE) to represent breaking waves and more generally ocean surface near the shore. We also describe ocean rendering methods in computer graphics, with a special interest in the simulation of phenomena such as foam and spray, and light's interaction with the ocean surface