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19 



Subject: Offshore Construction of 

 Multi-Purpose Platforms 



Backgrouitd: The US continues to 

 experience a population increase, 

 particularly in regions 

 concentrated near the coasts 

 where 50% of the population now 

 resides. As coastal regions 

 become ever more crowded, the 

 idea of building structures 

 offshore for a variety of purposes 

 becomes more attractive. 

 Offshore airports have already 

 been constructed in lapan and are 

 rapidly gaining appeal here for 

 both land use and noise mitigation 

 purposes, .\rtificial harbors which 

 can accommodate larger, deeper- 

 draft vessels would make 

 international shipping safer and 

 more accessible. Megaplatforms 

 for offshore oil production and 

 development would house families 

 of support personnel as well as 

 schools, churches, food stores and 

 whatever else is needed to support 

 an entire offshore community. 

 Purely recreational offshore travel 

 destinations are also possible with 

 hotels, theme parks, restaurants. 



and casinos. In some cases, offshore 

 highways could be built to reach 

 them. A wide variety of structures is 

 possible, ranging from artificial 

 islands to bottom-mounted and 

 semi-submersible platforms. 



Opportunity: Innovative materials 

 wnich are becoming available now 

 make these new structures possible. 

 Carbon fiber and composite plastics 

 could be utilized for strength, light 

 weight, low manufacturing costs, 

 and resistance to corrosion and 

 biofouling. Other construction 

 methods include re-use and re- 

 combination of existing offshore 

 structures from the oil industry, and 

 recycling of dredged materials from 

 the ocean and soFid waste materials 

 from the land (fly ash, sanitized 

 sludge, etc.) to form artificial islands 

 offshore. 



Hurdles: The technology necessary 

 to develop these large offshore 

 structures in a cost-effective manner 

 is presently being developed. The 

 federal regulations regarding 

 environmental impacts of these 

 structures would be enormous. 



Rationale for Partnership: 



Partnerships are required between 

 government, industry, and academia 

 to conduct the necessary 

 environmental impact studies. 

 These would include impacts on the 

 coastal circulation and sediment 

 transport, positive and negative 

 impacts on the local biota, visual 

 impacts, and hazards to navigation. 

 AUVs and robotic systems would be 

 needed d'jring the construction and 

 maintenance of some structures. 

 Offshore structures provide 

 platforms for mounting 

 instrumentation foi research, 

 weather prediction, and 

 aquaculture. The physical size and 

 magnitude of the proposed projects 

 cross state lines and demand 

 partnerships tor successful financing 

 and completion. 



Expected Product: The expected 

 products are innovative oftshore 

 structures which can replace or 

 improve upon facilities traditionally 

 housed near the coasts, being used 

 by the layman and the research 

 community alike. 



COMPUTING - One of the major accomplishments of the oceanographic community in 



the last decade has been associated with advances in 'data assimilation', the capability' 



of upgrading a predictive 



model by incorporating 



data on a regular basis. 



Advanced development of 



state-of-the-art massively 



parallel computers 



progresses. Scientists will 



continue to recognize the 



advanced capabilities of 



these machines, and 



teachers will utilize their 



sophisticated programs 



for visualization and 



simulation. The costs of 



these computational 



systems are high and their 



access is limited. Careful 



partnering between the 



owners, operators, 



programmers and 



analysts is essential, and 



coupling these efforts with 



the data collection 



partnerships, described 



above, will be highly 



productive. 



Subject: Operational Ocean 

 Characterization System 



Background: The Navy, for national 

 defense purposes, and civilian 

 organizations, for scientific purposes, 

 require the capability to measure, 

 analyze, and predict the state of the 

 world's oceans on a continual basis. 

 Such a continuum of function calls for 

 fusion of data previously collected 

 with that being collected (e.g. via 

 GOOS as described above), 

 developing an analysis of current 

 oceanic conditions using numerical 

 models based on best physical 

 principles understood, and finaily, 

 using best predictive model 

 techniques, forecasting of future 

 oceanic conditions. An operational 

 system that leaves out any part is less 

 useful and does not effectively utilize 

 the resources at hand. 



Observational strategies and 

 operations are improved by 

 concomitant "end-to-end simulation" 

 or "model-mediated approaches." 

 This optimizes the data gathering 

 methods against the uncterlying 

 requirements, as well as the relevant 

 physics and processes. Techniques 

 that not only adapt to the incoming 

 data stream but also alternative 

 sources of information (e.g. remote 

 sensing) offer a major capability 

 enhancement. 



Opportunity: The ability to 

 assimilate significant amounts of 

 disparate data in real-time and 

 onscene together with very capable 

 but relatively inexpensive numerical 

 processing machines make a "model- 

 mediated' approach very possible in 



the near to midterm (3-5 years). An 

 opportunity exists to forge 

 partnerships which bring together 

 archival and near real-time collected 

 data, large-scale computational 

 facilities, predictive models and the 

 methods to distribute results for 

 operational purposes and correction 

 of'improvements to the operational 

 oceanography system. 



Hurdles: 



1 . Multi-agency commitment for the 

 long term. It is an infrastructure 

 investment. 



2. Tendency to stop at collection/ 

 archival thereby preventing fullest 

 utility and modeling feedback/ 

 improvement. 



3. Bringing all assets to bear (eg. 

 COOS, satellites (multi-sensor), 

 lUSS, supercomputers, models). 



Rationale for Partnership: In addition 

 to savings due to mutual leveraging, 

 there is an overall advantage that 

 stems from a common basis for survey 

 sirategies. This will lead to improved 

 understanding of survey results as well 

 as more commonality of formats and 

 higher quality standards. Several 

 agencies and civilian talent need to be 

 posted to make the initiative 

 sufficiently solid and then sustain it. 



Expected Product: An archive, both 

 historical and current: a modeled 

 analysis of current/near current ocean 

 conditions; a prediction of oceanic 

 conditions. In addition to the above 

 "survey multipliers", the overall 

 approach leads to a robust nowcast 

 capability which has value in its own 



