WAVY-NOS

WAVY-NOS

WAVY-NOS is a radically new approach to in situ monitoring of littoral areas. Instead of following pre-set trajectories, multiple surface drifters are deployed simultaneously for taking observations with different sensing payloads. Multiple deployments of the drifters, either simultaneous or sequential, will compensate for the uncertainty in drifter trajectories.

WAVY-Echo drifters will carry echosounders, WAVY-Listener drifters are equipped with hydrophones and WAVY-Imager will carry bottom-mounted video cameras. All data will be stored onboard, but positions and alarms will be sent at a low rate to a Mission Centre via GSM.

With WAVY-NOS, coastal waters will become more accessible to common users, from both the technical and the financial points of view. The products and methods developed within the Project will become available for pre-commercial services.

The project brings together 3 Portuguese research institutions:

• FEUP, who will develop improved drifter localization, logging of acquired data and real-time communications with the offboard software.
• INESCTEC, who will be responsible for the Mission Centre that allows capturing, annotating, reviewing and publishing the data acquired by the drifters.
• IH, who will be responsible for field testing the developed prototypes and validate the acquired data. IH will also lead the engagement of end-users via the organization of co-design workshops.

The NORCE Norwegian Research Centre will be an important part of the consortium, being responsible for data interpretation of hydrophones and echosounders, as well as its selection and adaptation.

The technological development proposed by WAVY-NOS will bring additional innovation in products, services and processes of OMST, the Project Promoter. OMST will be in charge of project management, dissemination and business development. Moreover, OMST will lead the mechanical design, integration and production of drifter prototypes.