Management of this support program entails close interaction with the Ship Operations Program 

 in following the numerous iterations of the research vessel operating schedules. Interactions 

 with the technical support managers at the various institutions is also required to insure some 

 uniformity among the services provided on different vessels. Interaction with the science 

 support programs and the individual ship users is also required to evaluate and monitor the 

 effectiveness of services provided. 



As the technical sophistication and complexity of sea-going systems increase, the requirements 

 for technical support centers are also increasing. More and larger institutional centers are 

 projected as part of the new Global Ocean and Lithosphere Studies initiatives. 



II. Critical Needs of the Core Program 



The most important of the critical needs under this program are in the areas of in situ and 

 intelligent ocean sampling systems. 



A. In Situ Measurement Systems. Despite the fact that ship and manpower costs will 

 continue to increase, ocean science can broaden the scope of data acquisition without major 

 increases in costs if more effective measurement systems can be developed. Autonomous 

 vehicles may be one solution; others include fast response profilers; large, highly instrumented 

 towed arrays to increase the data acquired per ship-hour; and expendable instruments that may 

 be deployed from ship or aircraft and telemeter data to central locations. As the trend in ocean 

 measurements continues from small-scale, short-term to large-scale and long-term, better 

 sensors will be necessary. Although diverse sensors exist, many require substantial power and 

 are very delicate. If the requirement for long-term, unattended measurement is to be met, 

 research must be directed towards improving existing sensors and the development of entirely 

 new sensors and sensor systems with an emphasis on low power, high stability, robustness and 

 reliability. Funding of $1 .5M in FY 1 989 growing to $3.1 M in FY 1 996 is required for this 

 effort. 



B. Intelligent systems. Research in the field of "knowledge-based computing" has now 

 evolved to the state that it is feasible to apply some fundamental artificial intelligence (Al) 

 concepts to problems of ocean science. One can now consider programming "judgement" into 

 instrument and vehicle systems. There is a need to establish a development effort for applying 

 knowledge-based computing to ocean research. 



Current trends in ocean science require placing data acquisition systems in the ocean, 

 unattended, for long periods of time. An Al control system designed to handle a wide range of 

 unanticipated transient or steady state events could improve the quality of the data gathered. It 

 could control sampling rates, dynamic range, parameters measured, sensitivity of 

 measurement, etc. as well as handle any reliability problems associated with sensor or 

 equipment failure. The data system could be designed to behave as if the best of human experts 

 were onsite controlling the experiment. The addition of symbolic line-of-reasoning 

 methodologies to well developed mathematical techniques could provide new concepts for 

 instrumentation and measurement. 



57 



