Harmful Algal Bloom Characterization Via the Telesupervised Adaptive Ocean Sensor Fleet

We are developing a Sensor Web-relevant system called the Telesupervised Adaptive Ocean Sensor Fleet that uses a group of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration extended-deployment autonomous surface vehicles to enable in-situ study of surface and sub-surface characteristics of Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB). The architecture supports adaptive reconfiguration based on environmental sensor inputs (“smart” sensing), and increases data-gathering effectiveness and science return while reducing demands on scientists for tasking, control, and monitoring. It combines and adapts prior related work done at Carnegie Mellon University, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Wallops Flight Facility, Emergent Space Technologies, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Initial multi-vessel HAB characterization tests will be performed during summer 2007 with rhodamine dye as a HAB simulant and an airborne sensor validation system. The described architecture is broadly applicable to ecological forecasting, water management, carbon management, disaster management, coastal management, homeland security, and planetary exploration. Index Terms harmful algal blooms, sensor web, ocean sensing, adaptive sampling, telesupervision, multirobot systems.