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What is the Cabled Regional Observatory Workshop?
The National Science Foundation’s Division of Ocean Sciences asked Drs. Mike Purdy (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory-Columbia University) and David Karl (University of Hawaii) to chair the Cabled Regional Observatory Workshop designed to provide advice on the location of the backbone fiber-optic cable for the regional component of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). By soliciting input from scientists across disciplines and engineers familiar with all aspects of the proposed regional infrastructure components, the workshop will identify the optimum location for the backbone cable to address the broadest range of scientific questions. How does the Cabled Regional Observatory Workshop differ from the Scientific Cabled Observatories for Time Series Workshop? The Scientific Cabled Observatories for Time Series (SCOTS) workshop was designed to provide advice on the scientific rationale and implementation of a network of cabled observatories. The SCOTS report focused on science questions that require, or would most effectively be addressed by regional networks of multidisciplinary cabled observatories in three generic domains-the open ocean, geologic plates and coastal systems. Building on the recommendations of the SCOTS report, the Cabled Regional Observatory Workshop will focus on the regional scale and identify the specific location for the backbone cable considering the high priority science questions to be addressed with this infrastructure. Why are coastal zone processes not specifically highlighted? Unlike SCOTS, the Cabled Regional Observatory Workshop will focus on the regional component of the OOI. Invited participants have broad expertise in diverse scientific areas, including coastal zone processes, and relevant coastal zone processes will be incorporated into discussions of the scientific themes and location of the backbone cable. Additional activities related specifically to coastal observatories will be held in the future. Ocean Observing Activities Within The National Science Foundation What is the ORION Program? The Ocean Research Interactive Observatory Networks (ORION) program was established by NSF to operate and manage existing ocean observing sites and futures sites, some of which will be constructed by the MREFC Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The ORION Program will also coordinate the science driving the construction of this research observing network as well as operation and maintenance of the infrastructure; development of instrumentation and mobile platforms and their incorporation into the observatory network; and planning, coordination, and implementation of educational and public outreach activities. What is the MREFC account? The Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction account is a NSF-wide capital asset account that provides funding for the establishment of major science and engineering infrastructure having costs ranging from several tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. NSF established this account in FY 1995 to promote effective planning and management for the support of sizable investments made over a limited period of time. The MREFC account supports state-of-the-art tools that are centralized in nature, integrated systems of leading-edge instruments, and distributed nodes of information that serve as shared-use networked infrastructure in advancing one or more fields of scientific study. Examples include accelerators, telescopes, research vessels, aircraft, earthquake simulators, networked high-tech research platforms, advanced computing resources, digital libraries, and large databases. The MREFC process begins with internal requests from NSF Divisions for large equipment items or facilities that are proposed to the NSF Director and the National Science Board (NSB) with the hope that they are approved and eventually put into a NSF budget request. The OOI has been approved by the NSB and was included in the FY 2004 budget request as a recommended start for FY 2006. The five year MREFC funding for the OOI will ramp up from ~$25M to ~$75M in FY 2008, and finish with ~$35M in FY 2010, for a total of ~$200M over five years. What is the Ocean Observatory Initiative (OOI)? With funding from the MREFC account, OCE plans to construct an integrated observatory network that will provide the oceanographic research and education communities with a new mode of access to the ocean. The OOI has three elements: 1) a network of regional cabled observatories on the seafloor spanning multiple geological and oceanographic features and processes, 2) several relocatable deep-sea buoys that could be deployed in harsh environments such as the Southern Ocean, and 3) new construction or enhancements to existing facilities leading to an expanded network of coastal observatories. How will the science be funded? How will the network continue to be funded? As with all MREFC projects, the science that will result from the establishment of this infrastructure must be supported by the division from which the request originated, in this case OCE. Normally, this additional support comes from budget increases that follow the capitalization of infrastructure from the MREFC investment. In the same manner, continued support for the network must come from funds appropriated to OCE. Will the observatory data be open to the community? Yes, the data collected by the OOI will be subject to open access, real or near-real time availability. Some delays in accessibility may be needed to ensure the quality of some datasets. In instances where PIs place third-party sensors on observatory infrastructure, there may be a moratorium of one year or less to ensure that the sensors are operating properly. How will the ORION Program be managed? What is the mechanism to participate in observatory science? The ORION Program will be coordinated by a Project Office whose tasks include the following:
The overall management structure for the ORION Program is based on a structure that has been successfully used by the Ocean Drilling Program for many years. The day-to-day management, coordination, and oversight of the observing infrastructure will be the responsibility of an Executive Director of the ORION Program Office established through a Co-operative Agreement with NSF. This Director will be accountable to an Executive Committee under which will be established Scientific and Technical Advisory Committees. The Executive and Advisory Committees will draw their membership from individuals with expertise in ocean observing science and engineering. The Advisory Committees will have the power to establish subcommittees when more specific advice is needed. Subcontracts for the various components of the network will be established by the Project Office to provide specified ocean observation capabilities. The awardees of these subcontracts will work closely with the community-based Technical and Scientific Advisory Committees, the Director, and NSF Program staff. The ORION Project Office will actively pursue international coordination with the ORION Program. The existing National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) structure will facilitate participation from other Federal Agencies. The Project Office will also work to keep ORION activities consistent with and synergistic to the goals of the National Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) effort. Scientific use of infrastructure related to the OOI will be on a peer-reviewed basis where the highest quality proposals will be awarded the funds needed to place appropriate instrumentation on the ocean observatory network infrastructure. What are the results of completed planning efforts? To advance planning for a research observatory network and to obtain community input into the establishment of this network, three activities were recently completed, which provided NSF with advice on the moored buoy, coastal, and regional observatory components of the OOI. In addition to these activities, an NSF-sponsored National Research Council (NRC) study “Enabling Ocean Research in the 21st Century: Implementation of a Network of Ocean Observatories” provided recommendations on issues related to overall implementation of the OOI. The first activity was a NSF sponsored workshop on “Coastal Observing Systems for Research” coordinated by the Coastal Ocean Process Program. This workshop determined critical research questions that could best be addressed by coastal observing systems and identified current and emerging technologies that would be most useful in developing such a system. The second activity was the “Scientific Cabled Observatories for Time Series” (SCOTS) workshop, which was designed to provide advice on the scientific rationale and implementation of a network of regional cabled observatories. The SCOTS report identified science questions that require, or are most effectively addressed by, regional networks of multidisciplinary cabled observatories in three generic domains – the open ocean, geologic plates, and coastal. The third activity produced a report entitled “Feasibility Study and Implementation Plan for A Global Network of Moored Buoy Observatories”. This report outlined the costs and engineering requirements to create a global network of moored-buoy observatories for time series research. This plan includes technical specifications for three potential moored-buoy designs and information on current prototyping efforts relevant to the engineering of those designs. An efficient data telemetry and management system is also described, along with prototype efforts, and a proposed timetable. All of these activities were overseen by the Dynamics of Earth and Ocean Systems (DEOS) committee, which is a planning effort by the academic research community and the NSF to lay the groundwork for a network of ocean observatories. The overall objective of DEOS is to provide a focus for coordinated scientific planning that identifies the science and engineering trends, opportunities, and considerations for making sustained research observations from fixed ocean observatories. The DEOS website, which includes a list of FAQs to complement this one, can be found at www.coreocean.org/deos. What is the ORION Workshop? NSF, in cooperation with NSERC, is sponsoring the ORION workshop, to be held January 4-8 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The goal of the ORION workshop is to formulate the science priorities and educational opportunities that can best be addressed over the short and long term given sustained power and two-way communication within the ocean. Realizing the full scientific and educational potential of the OOI will require broad participation of scientists, engineers and educators from the United States and around the world. By promoting interaction between individuals with diverse scientific and technical expertise in this five-day workshop, we hope to establish community consensus on the science priorities and educational opportunities for each component of the OOI and the ORION program as a whole. Additional information can be found at: www.orionprogram.org. |
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