Network-enabled rapid environmental assessment: Architectures for near-real-time data collection and fusion

Advanced communication and information processing techniques can be applied to underwater research to enable new ways of enhancing real-time experimental outcome. This paper presents solutions developed to support the Dynamics of the Adriatic in Real Time (DART) sea trials, conducted between NURC and 26 international partners in 2006, which were characterized by large shore–ship–shore data exchange requirements, in excess of 1 GB/day. The three-pillar approach adopted (based on network infrastructure, information infrastructure, context-based data management) involves the seamless combination of different commercial-off-the shelf components (369 kb/s 2-way satellite link, 1 Mb/s unidirectional satellite link, molecular sequence reduction compression and caching) and required the development of quality of service tools and policies, to translate scientific needs from natural language to configuration files. Results showed the possibility of transferring, over a 27-day period, more than 40 GB of data, meeting experimental requirements with minimal expense: the variable cost associated to the transmission of 1 MB of data was in the order of 10 Eurocents using a two-way Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) system and of 40 Eurocents using Digital Video Broadcasting Satellite (DVB-S) unidirectional service. Although the solution presented refers to a specific Rapid Environmental Assessment (REA) trial, its application is not constrained to REA only. The flexible combination of technological components and well-proven data management methodologies allows its application to a broader range of scientific problems associated with near-real-time exchange of large datasets.