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Description
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.
Summary of project results
The WAVY-NOS project addresses significant challenges in coastal marine environments, specifically the need for efficient, low-cost, and portable observation systems. Traditional methods for monitoring these environments are often expensive, logistically challenging, and limited in scope. The project set out to overcome these obstacles by developing an advanced drifter-based observation system, capable of capturing a wide range of environmental data while being easy to deploy and recover.
Dissemination and Exploitation Plan (lead by OMST) Within the first months of the project, the dissemination and communication strategy will be defined. Moreover, the dissemination infrastructure will be set up, such as the project website and social media accounts and posting schedule. This infrastructure will be maintained throughout the project. Outreach and Dissemination (lead by OMST) This task concerns the actual content creation and dissemination. The results of the project will be broadly advertised both via digital marketing as well as in fairs, international symposia and workshops close to potential end-users. End-user engagement (lead by IH) From an initial list of potential end-users, a short list of stakeholders will be selected to form an advisory board. This board will provide continuous feedback on the results of the project as well as guidance on future uses and requirements. For this, a number of field demonstrations and workshops will be organized where specific use cases will be addressed.
The WAVY-NOS project has successfully developed a versatile, cost-effective, and advanced coastal monitoring system, addressing critical gaps in traditional methods. By creating a modular drifter platform with specialized sensing payloads, extending the LSTS Software toolchain, and demonstrating real-time data monitoring and onboard processing capabilities, the project has significantly enhanced our ability to monitor and manage coastal environments. The engagement from end-users and collection of valuable real-world data underscore the project''s impact and potential for broader applications.
Summary of bilateral results
Of the three types of sensing payloads, Norce (Norway) contributed expertise, equipment, and tools tovalidate two through in-lab and field tests.For the echosounder, this involved:● Deploying a surface robotic platform to validate the sensor in the field.● Using a high-end echosounder unit for accuracy studies.● Optimizing configuration settings and frequency selection to enhance performance.● Providing a more accurate algorithm for bathymetry measurements based on raw data than thevendor’s solution.For the hydrophones, this included:● Testing multiple hydrophones in the lab to compare sensitivity against calibrated references.● Assisting the portuguese partners with data acquisition and registration.● Gaining access to early prototype hydrophones from NEXUS (Norway), which outperformedexisting commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions.These collaborative efforts significantly improved the accuracy and reliability of the sensing payloads, strengthening the overall capabilities of the system.