The Jason II virtual control van system, data acquisition system, web-based event logger, and SeaNet

Scientific underwater remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) collect data from multiple video cameras and scientific instruments. This integrated information is often only available in an ROV control-van during operations. Although all the data is logged, it is difficult for scientists to re-create a combined display of this data and have the ability to review and access an entire cruise dataset easily. We introduce a methodology of taking continuous real-time information snapshots (infosnaps) during interesting events and at regular time intervals for complete data coverage. These infosnaps capture four simultaneous video sources, vehicle data, instrument data, and event data as entered by scientists. The infosnaps are automatically cataloged and immediately accessible and searchable via a web-browser. We developed, built, and deployed the Jason II Virtual Control Van system on seven Jason cruises. The system has captured over 50,000 control-van infosnaps, containing more than 200,000 images co-registered with vehicle telemetry and scientific instrument data. The Virtual Control Van is designed for both scientific collaboration and public/educational outreach. It has been integrated with the SeaNet system to provide remote on-shore access. The report describes the Jason II Virtual Control Van system and includes instructions for setting up the system in the field.Funding was provided by the W. M. Keck Foundation under Grant No. 991735

4DGeoBrowser : a web-based data browser and server for accessing and analyzing multi-disciplinary data

This report describes the 4DGeoBrowser software system. The GeoBrowser is a web-based application developed at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution by Steven Lerner and Andrew Maffei. It has been designed with the goal of creating, accessing, and analyzing repositories of oceanographic datasets that have been generated by investigators in differing scientific disciplines. Once the information is loaded onto a Geobrowser server the investigator-user is able to login to the website and use a set of data access and analysis tools to search, plot, and display this information. GeoBrowser servers are also capable of processing commands that are submitted remotely via HTTP URLs or email. Scientists are able to use this capability to make calls to the GeoBrowser server and generate click-able maps, tables of urls, and customized HTML pages. These can then be used to enhance websites associated with scientific projects. Examples of supporting scientific website functionality that includes time series plotting, data delivery by email, geo-spatial plotting of interdisciplinary data, map-based search capabilities and other functionality are presented in this report. The report includes examples of GeoBrowser application websites, a user manual, and a reference guide. In addition, the concept of Electronic Index Cards (EICs) is presented

Self-Positioning Smart Buoys, The \u27Un-Buoy\u27 Solution: Logistic Considerations Using Autonomous Surface Craft Technology and Improved Communications Infrastructure

Moored buoys have long served national interests, but incur high development, construction, installation, and maintenance costs. Buoys which drift off-location can pose hazards to mariners, and in coastal waters may cause environmental damage. Moreover, retrieval, repair and replacement of drifting buoys may be delayed when data would be most useful. Such gaps in coastal buoy data can pose a threat to national security by reducing maritime domain awareness. The concept of self-positioning buoys has been advanced to reduce installation cost by eliminating mooring hardware. We here describe technology for operation of reduced cost self-positioning buoys which can be used in coastal or oceanic waters. The ASC SCOUT model is based on a self-propelled, GPS-positioned, autonomous surface craft that can be pre-programmed, autonomous, or directed in real time. Each vessel can communicate wirelessly with deployment vessels and other similar buoys directly or via satellite. Engineering options for short or longer term power requirements are considered, in addition to future options for improved energy delivery systems. Methods of reducing buoy drift and position-maintaining energy requirements for self-locating buoys are also discussed, based on the potential of incorporating traditional maritime solutions to these problems. We here include discussion of the advanced Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) communications draft protocol which offers improved wireless communication capabilities underwater, to adjacent vessels, and to satellites. DTN is particularly adapted for noisy or loss-prone environments, thus it improves reliability. In addition to existing buoy communication via commercial satellites, a growing network of small satellites known as PICOSATs can be readily adapted to provide low-cost communications nodes for buoys. Coordination with planned vessel Automated Identification Systems (AIS) and International Maritime Organization standards for buoy and vessel notificat- - ion systems are reviewed and the legal framework for deployment of autonomous surface vessels is considered

Towards Linked Data for Oceanographic Science: The R2R Eventlogger Project, Controlled Vocabularies, and Ontologies at The MBLWHOI Library

Objective: Research vessels coordinated by the United States University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (US-UNOLS) collect data which are considered important oceanographic science research products. The NSF-funded Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R) project aims to improve access to these data and diminish barriers to their use. One aspect of the R2R project has been to develop a shipboard scientific event logging system, Eventlogger, which incorporates best practice guidelines, controlled vocabularies, a cruise metadata schema, and a scientific event log. Eventlogger facilitates the eventual ingestion of datasets into oceanographic data repositories for subsequent integration and synthesis by investigators. The careful use of controlled vocabularies and ontologies is an important feature of this system, as the use of internationally-informed, consensus-driven controlled vocabularies will make data sets more interoperable, discoverable and reusable. Methods: The R2R Eventlogger project is led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and the management of the controlled vocabularies is led by the Data Librarian in the Marine Biological Laboratory/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (MBLWHOI) Library. The first target vocabulary has been one for oceanographic instruments. Management of this vocabulary has thus far consisted of reconciling project vocabulary terms with the more widely used community vocabularies served by the NERC Vocabulary Server v2.0 (NVS2.0): terms included in the SeaDataNet Device Catalogue (L22) and the SeaDataNet Device Category vocabularies (L05). Rather than adopt existing community terms, it is more often the case that local terms are mapped by the Data Managers in the NSF-funded Biological and Chemical Oceanographic Data Management Office (BCO-DMO) to community terms, which preserves any important information and meaning investigators impart through the process of assigning these local terms, and has less impact on researchers. New terms, those that cannot be mapped to the existing community vocabularies (often custom, or modified instruments), are submitted for review to the SeaVOX governance process for addition to the community vocabularies. These vocabularies and their mappings are an important part of the aforementioned Eventlogger system. Before a research cruise, investigators configure the instruments they intend to use for their science activities. The instruments available for selection are provided by the MBLWHOI Data Librarian, who curates UNOLS ship-specific lists of standard shipboard instruments using terms for instruments from the R2R Eventlogger Project Vocabulary. Nonstandard shipboard instruments a researcher or investigator wishes to use can also be added, and these instrument terms will eventually be inducted into the R2R Eventlogger Project Vocabulary. Results: Eventlogger is currently being tested across the UNOLS fleet. A large submission of suggested instrument terms to the SeaDataNet community listserv is currently in progress. New tools for facilitating the management, mapping, and use of these controlled vocabularies are being developed, and new projects with eager partners are envisioned. Ideas for future controlled vocabularies for the ocean science community include: Cruise IDs, Persons, and Ships. Conclusions: The promotion and use of controlled vocabularies and ontologies will pave the way for linked data in oceanographic science. By mapping local terms to authoritative and community-accepted terms, links are created whereby related data sets can be better discovered, and utilized. Librarians have an established history of working with controlled vocabularies and metadata. Libraries, have and will continue to, serve as centers for information discovery as well as a natural home for the management of standards

An authoritative global database for active submarine hydrothermal vent fields

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2013. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 14 (2013): 4892–4905, doi:10.1002/2013GC004998.The InterRidge Vents Database is available online as the authoritative reference for locations of active submarine hydrothermal vent fields. Here we describe the revision of the database to an open source content management system and conduct a meta-analysis of the global distribution of known active vent fields. The number of known active vent fields has almost doubled in the past decade (521 as of year 2009), with about half visually confirmed and others inferred active from physical and chemical clues. Although previously known mainly from mid-ocean ridges (MORs), active vent fields at MORs now comprise only half of the total known, with about a quarter each now known at volcanic arcs and back-arc spreading centers. Discoveries in arc and back-arc settings resulted in an increase in known vent fields within exclusive economic zones, consequently reducing the proportion known in high seas to one third. The increase in known vent fields reflects a number of factors, including increased national and commercial interests in seafloor hydrothermal deposits as mineral resources. The purpose of the database now extends beyond academic research and education and into marine policy and management, with at least 18% of known vent fields in areas granted or pending applications for mineral prospecting and 8% in marine protected areas.For support to prepare this manuscript, we thank the National Science Foundation (OCE08-38923, GeoEd12-02977), the NOAA Vents (now Earth-Ocean Interactions) Program and the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO) under NOAA Cooperative Agreement NA10OAR4320148, and WHOI.2014-05-1

Energy-efficient quantum non-demolition measurement with a spin-photon interface

Spin-photon interfaces (SPIs) are key devices of quantum technologies, aimed at coherently transferring quantum information between spin qubits and propagating pulses of polarized light. We study the potential of a SPI for quantum non demolition (QND) measurements of a spin state. After being initialized and scattered by the SPI, the state of a light pulse depends on the spin state. It thus plays the role of a pointer state, information being encoded in the light's temporal and polarization degrees of freedom. Building on the fully Hamiltonian resolution of the spin-light dynamics, we show that quantum superpositions of zero and single photon states outperform coherent pulses of light, producing pointer states which are more distinguishable with the same photon budget. The energetic advantage provided by quantum pulses over coherent ones is maintained when information on the spin state is extracted at the classical level by performing projective measurements on the light pulses. The proposed schemes are robust against imperfections in state of the art semi-conducting devices.Comment: Accepted for publication in Quantu

Toward cyberinfrastructure to facilitate collaboration and reproducibility for marine integrated ecosystem assessments

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2016. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here under a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license granted to WHOI. It is made available for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Earth Science Informatics 10 (2017): 85-97, doi:10.1007/s12145-016-0280-4.There is a growing need for cyberinfrastructure to support science-based decision making in management of natural resources. In particular, our motivation was to aid the development of cyberinfrastructure for Integrated Ecosystem Assessments (IEAs) for marine ecosystems. The IEA process involves analysis of natural and socio-economic information based on diverse and disparate sources of data, requiring collaboration among scientists of many disciplines and communication with other stakeholders. Here we describe our bottom-up approach to developing cyberinfrastructure through a collaborative process engaging a small group of domain and computer scientists and software engineers. We report on a use case evaluated for an Ecosystem Status Report, a multi-disciplinary report inclusive of Earth, life, and social sciences, for the Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem. Ultimately, we focused on sharing workflows as a component of the cyberinfrastructure to facilitate collaboration and reproducibility. We developed and deployed a software environment to generate a portion of the Report, retaining traceability of derived datasets including indicators of climate forcing, physical pressures, and ecosystem states. Our solution for sharing workflows and delivering reproducible documents includes IPython (now Jupyter) Notebooks. We describe technical and social challenges that we encountered in the use case and the importance of training to aid the adoption of best practices and new technologies by domain scientists. We consider the larger challenges for developing end-to-end cyberinfrastructure that engages other participants and stakeholders in the IEA process.Support for this research was provided by the U. S. National Science Foundation #0955649 with additional support to SB by the Investment in Science Fund at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Shallow Water ’06 : a joint acoustic propagation/nonlinear internal wave physics experiment

Author Posting. © Oceanography Society, 2007. This article is posted here by permission of Oceanography Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Oceanography 20, 4 (2007): 156-167.Since the end of the Cold War, the US Navy has had an increasing interest in continental shelves and slopes as operational areas. To work in such areas requires a good understanding of ocean acoustics, coastal physical oceanography, and, in the modern era, autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) operations

Acoustic and oceanographic observations and configuration information for the WHOI moorings from the SW06 experiment

This document describes data, sensors, and other useful information pertaining to the moorings that were deployed from the R/V Knorr from July 24th to August 4th, 2006 in support of the SW06 experiment. The SW06 experiment was a large, multi-disciplinary effort performed 100 miles east of the New Jersey coast. A total of 62 acoustic and oceanographic moorings were deployed and recovered. The moorings were deployed in a “T” geometry to create an along-shelf path along the 80 meter isobath and an across-shelf path starting at 600 meters depth and going shoreward to a depth of 60 meters. A cluster of moorings was placed at the intersection of the two paths to create a dense sensor-populated area to measure a 3-dimensional physical oceanography. Environmental moorings were deployed along both along-shelf and across-shelf paths to measure the physical oceanography along those paths. Moorings with acoustic sources were placed at the outer ends of the “T” to propagate various signals along these paths. Five single hydrophone receivers were positioned on the across shelf path and a vertical and horizontal hydrophone array was positioned at the intersection of the “T” to get receptions from all the acoustics assets that were used during SW06.Funding was provided by the Office of Naval Research under Contract No. N00014-04-1014