1998 Year of the Ocean Marine Science, Technology, and Research 



The technology necessary to develop large offshore structures, innovative vessels, and 

 undersea vehicles in a cost-effective manner is presently being developed. Partnerships are 

 required between government, industry, and academia to conduct the necessary materials 

 research and environmental impact studies. AUVs and robotic systems would be needed during 

 the construction and maintenance of some structures, and for conducting autonomous research in 

 harsh environments. Offshore structures provide platforms for mounting instrumentation for 

 research, weather prediction, and aquaculture. 



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 continues to progress. 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. 



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 ocean observational systems as described above), developing 

 an analysis of current oceanic conditions using numerical models based on best physical 

 principles understood, and finally, using the best predictive modeling techniques to develop 

 forecasts 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 underlying requirements, as well as the relevant physics and processes. Techniques that not 

 only adapt to the incoming data stream, but also to alternative sources of information (e.g., 

 remote sensing) offer a major capability enhancement. 



The ability to assimilate significant amounts of disparate data in real-time and on scene 

 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 or improvements to the operational oceanography system. 



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