Ocean Scientific International (OSIL) has supplied a data buoy platform to the ‘ORION’ joint research and development centre for use as a real-time monitoring station on an EU-funded project managing coastal erosion.
The Harmonized Coastal Corrosion Management Framework for Enhancing the Implementation of the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Protocol (HERMES) project required a platform with the ability to record a full profile of water column currents, tidal variations, wave parameters and estimated suspended particulate matter (SPM) concentrations, with the data transmitted to a base station on land in real time, complete with software to analyse and process the data with a graphical display.
The OSIL 1.2m Tern buoy offers a high visibility platform with a GPRS communication system ideally suited to the installation location given the proximity to the shore and a popular wreck diving site.
The buoy is equipped with a seabed mounted Nortek AWAC to provide three-dimensional current profiles in cells with thicknesses from 0.25 to 4m. The ADCP is additionally furnished with a Prolog board for internal wave processing, and it can also be used to estimate suspended sediment loads by correlating the acoustic back scatter intensity to a site specific suspended sediment calibration.