Vital data relayed in real-time
Water temperature, current, tides and wind speed and direction could make all the difference in a Coast Guard search and rescue, response to an oil spill or homeland security emergency. Now, with the help of a system that monitors all of these variables, seafarers can stay informed about their environment in real-time.
“I’ve been working a long time with environmental models, trying to predict” how coastal conditions work together, said Malcolm Spaulding, University of Rhode Island Professor of Ocean Engineering, who originally developed the system. “I’d been working on a number of the elements for 25 years and I realized we were far enough along that we could put the elements together and take advantage of the information on the Internet.”
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COASTMAP, further improved by Spaulding and a team of researchers, collects data on the Internet on a variety of ocean conditions and updates them routinely. This information includes water salinity, weather forecasts, satellite imagery, marine navigation charts, Geographic Information Systems data, wave heights and other physical oceanographic data.
“It collects routine information on that area,” Spaulding said. “The program updates the information automatically – you set up the program to sample the information constantly.”
For example, if there is an oil spill off the Rhode Island coast, at the entrance to Narragansett Bay, the Coast Guard can enter the location of the spill, the size of the spill and whether it was a one-time release or a continuous leak, and run a simulation based on the current conditions, Spaulding said. Using the available information on the Web, the Coast Guard would be able to predict how far the slick will travel, how it would impact the coast, how much would be mixed with the water, how much will evaporate and the amount that would be mixed into the water column, he said.
“They have to be able to get the HazMat team out there to the location of the spill and forecast where the spill will go over the next three days,” he said.
Spaulding said that the technology to use the information has always been there; no one ever thought to develop a system that combined all the databases and programs to use all at once though.
“It’s the equivalent of what they do in the air; we’ll do that for the coast,” he said. “It’s using the Internet as a community network to collect information from a wide variety of databases.”
COASTMAP is a globally re-locatable system, which means it can be set up anywhere and adjusted for use in any coastal environment in the world, Spaulding added. It’s ease of use is also something that makes the system marketable to all regions – the connection to the computer is picture-based, so the user can plug in all of the necessary requests for information and see the simulation on the screen. The user can also overlay any other systems like GIS, land use, location of habitats or other environmental data.
Spaulding said the COASTMAP system would be available to government, scientific and other agencies that utilize this information every day to conduct their business. The team – Spaulding’s business Applied Science Associates, URI, Drexel University, Brown University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – will soon establish a Web site where the general public can access the same collection of information. ASA currently has a hosting site up, www.appsci.com where COASTMAP can be viewed. Eventually, Spaulding said the system will have its own site.
The public version of the system will be much like the older weather phone system, where a mariner could call for the weather, tides, wind and other oceanographic data. Currently the Smithsonian is using COASTMAP to monitor a coastal reef off of Belize, Spaulding said. The Mexican Navy is also using it, as is the U.S. Navy Oceanographic Office’s Homeland Security Division.
The cost to license and install the software might be $40,000 to $50,000,
Spaulding said. The more programs installed, the cheaper the price, he added.
Exxon Mobile is licensing the spill program from the team, and it is being installed
in different offices around the world.
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