Photo credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

Today, more than 50% of all Americans live in coastal counties; that figure is expected to jump to 75% by 2025. The Digital Ocean Project can offer coastal zone applications to address the increasing demands posed by these concentrations. Current U.S. facilities are demonstrating that the technology exists to collect real-time ocean data and readily share it via the Internet. In addition, Sea Grant's success with the Autonomous Ocean Sampling Network shows that a network of AUVs working with distributed acoustic and point sensors can achieve spatially adaptive sampling.

The first stage here will be to develop tools to assimilate data from distributed observatories, or even individual networked ocean sensors. And because models become more powerful when they can access data collected from around the country or the world, the second stage will be to connect this assimilated data with the various existing computer models of ocean processes.

Examples of potential benefits abound. Fisheries management would benefit from the ability to quickly and easily test population models using data for Atlantic and Pacific salmon—or any other species. An almost instantaneous comparison of species trends across the country would be a new tool for fisheries policy development. Similarly, models using assimilated water quality databases along a coastline or from neighboring watersheds would be of greater value to regional authorities.

Particular topics of interest include wireless telemetry from fixed instruments, better fish stock assessment tools, and intra-instrument communication so that any deployed sensor can become part of a vast network feeding data into a national database.

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