Venugopalan Pallayil, Jay Pearlman, René Garello
OES has been a technical sponsor for the OSM22 Meeting held during Feb 27th to Mar 4th. This is the first time OES has been engaged with OSM. The meeting was originally planned to be a hybrid event but was later converted to a fully virtual programme due to the Omicron virus scare. This in a way limited opportunities for direct interaction with the participants. Even so, the technical sessions organized by IEEE OES were largely successful and continued participation in the future OSM is recommended.
OES organized 6 technical sessions and one town hall. Below is a summary of the sessions and names of lead session organizers/chairs. All sessions were reasonably well attended. In the following sections the session chairs and organisers provide their perspective on how well the sessions were organized and their feedback for future similar events.
| Session Details | Organisers/Session Chairs | Remarks |
| OD06: Machine Learning for Oceanographic Applications | Chair: Michael Bianco
Co-Chairs: Venugopalan Pallayil & Hanu Singh |
9 abstracts. One session of 6 papers and 3 posters. (26 attendees)
|
| OS10: Marine Litter and Microplastic Monitoring and Understanding | Chair: Rene Garello
Co-Chairs: Mishra Pravakar Audrey Hasson, Bhavani Narayanswam
|
8 abstracts. One session of 6 papers and 1 poster, 1 withdrawn |
| OS11: Observing and Predicting the Global Coastal Ocean. | Chair: Emma Heslop | 20 abstracts, 2 sessions of 6 papers, one session of 7 papers and 1 poster |
| OM02: Pairing autonomous monitoring with modelling to expand capacity and develop new understanding of coastal ocean systems | Chair: Brandy Armstrong | 8 abstracts, one session of 6 papers and 2 posters |
| OT17: Ocean Observation for the Small Island Developing State | Chair: Venkatesan Ramaswamy | 8 abstracts, 1 session (no posters) |
| HL14: Autonomous Sensing and Monitoring in Polar environments. | Chair: Andreas Marouchos Co-chair: Venugopalan Pallayil | 13 abstracts and one withdrawal. One session of 6 papers and one session of 5 papers. 1 poster (36 attendees) |
| TH04: Connecting early career ocean professionals with academia and industry experts | Chair: Hari Vishnu
Co-Chair: Venugopalan Pallayil |
35-40 min presentation. 20 min interaction time. |
OD06 Session Chair, Michael Bianco:
The use of Machine Learning (ML) for analysis of geophysical data is now ubiquitous in academia and industry. In this session, we brought together scientists and practitioners from a range of related disciplines in Earth and oceanographic signal processing, who are using and developing cutting-edge ML-based analysis techniques. We were specifically interested in examining issues relevant to the use of ML in a broad range of oceanographic and Earth sensing modalities, including acoustics, optics, and sensor array processing. Challenges addressed included ML-model generalization in uncertain environments, lack of labelled datasets (e.g. unsupervised and semi-supervised learning), and ML model prediction confidence). We also had contributions towards statistical sampling strategies and techniques as applied to ML in the area of ocean sensing and monitoring. Many processing techniques presented could help us in our understanding of oceans better and also contribute to the UN Decade of Oceans theme ‘The science we need for the oceans we want’.
“I really enjoyed the session yesterday. Overall, I thought our talks went well, and I was happy to see that those in attendance were engaged. There are indeed many opportunities for ML in Ocean and Earth science broadly, and we were able to showcase a diversity of perspectives and problem sets. I was honored to have the opportunity to contribute to the IEEE OES program, and I look forward to working together again in the future”
HL14 Session Chair, Andreas Marouchos:
The Polar regions, the Arctic, the Antarctic and Greenland, are undergoing significant change due to anthropogenic forcing. Despite their critical importance in understanding climate change, these regions remain some of the most under-sampled regions on the planet. In this session the focus was on the role autonomous sensing and monitoring to enhance our ability to map these areas both spatially and temporally, especially in areas that are remote and difficult to get to, and to obtain measurements that span winter, spring and fall in the austral regions as opposed to most measurements that are made in austral summers. The session was attended by engineering community and field scientists across a variety of disciplines to build bridges across these somewhat disparate communities. The session had significance with respect to the UN Decade of Oceans actions related to cost effective and reliable technologies for ocean mapping and climate change.
“As part of OSM22 The Autonomous Sensing and Monitoring in Polar Environments session received numerous abstracts, which were sorted into two oral sessions and one poster session. The poster session was focused on the science delivery of platforms while the two oral sessions presented novel work in the area of autonomous sensing platforms and applications respectively. It was a genuine pleasure to engage in technical discussion as part of the Ocean Sciences Meeting and attendees to each of the sessions were engaged and asked pointed questions. In particular, during the second oral session there was a long series of questions and discussion around the autonomous measurement of ocean carbon in the Southern Ocean and what strategies might be employed to help address the lack of observations in that region. It was great to see scientists and engineers who normally work in the Arctic get engaged in a discussion on Antarctic observing and to share thoughts and experiences. This is exactly the kind of cross-hemisphere engagement we are hoping to grow as part of the Polar Oceans Technology Committee. We look forward to engaging with OSM in the future and hosting additional sessions on marine autonomy”
OT17 Session Chair, Venkatesan Ramaswamy:
“Under the UN Decade, there is an enhanced focus to develop science for the society and for the Small Island Developing State (SIDS) to address the climate change risk and impacts from extreme weather events and sea level rise. Further to develop and implement nature-based solutions and benefit from the blue economy. SIDS are the most vulnerable state subjected to vagaries of the Ocean. Still out of 25 Island states on the basis of population and area, not even 10 of these Island nations have sustained ocean observations. This session focussed on Ocean Observation for SIDS with objectives to highlight the need to have ocean observations, capacity to apply ocean observations for social and economic benefit, and to improve the forecasts for severe weather events experienced by SIDS. An open discussion was followed after the presentations by the panellist. Under the UN Decade, there is an enhanced focus to develop science for the society and for the Small Island Developing State (SIDS) which include addressing the climate change risk and impacts from extreme weather events and sea level rise. developing and implementing nature-based solutions and benefit from the blue economy etc. The panel of speakers emphasised the need to educate the coastal population about the importance of ocean observations. apprise them of the cost of ocean observing systems and proposed the concept of citizen scientists in ocean observations.
OS11 Session Chair, Emma Heslop:
The UN Ocean Decade program “CoastPredict” worked with IEEE to sponsor three OSM sessions on observing and understanding coastal dynamics. The CoastPredict goal is to achieve a predicted global coastal ocean where society understands and can respond to changing ocean conditions. A transformative aspect of CoastPredict is to embrace the coastal ocean as the area that extends from inland waters around coastal cities to the nearshore, shelf and ocean environments. These sessions had presentations that included enhanced ocean observations at regional and local scale, extending the existing regional observing capabilities. The first session of the OS11 series was on CoastPredict and coastal modeling. Other presentations in this session included: Operational Modeling Capacity in European Seas: Assessment and Recommendations from the EuroGOOS coastal working group; and Design and implementation of an integrated coastal observing system at regional scale. In the third session, there were presentations of infrastructures to support coastal modeling. This included presentations on: “Towards best practices for global interoperable coastal ocean observing and forecasting through the use of the Ocean Best Practices System” and another providing a description of a comprehensive coastal ocean resource environment.
OS10 Session Chair: Rene Garello
Marine litter is of growing global concern and is a multi-dimensional problem with economic, environmental, cultural, and human health costs. While quantitative information on production and use of plastics is to a large extent available, the fate of plastics discarded or leaked into the environment is highly uncertain. In particular, knowledge of how much plastic at different scales, down to micro and nano levels, reaches the ocean and the trajectories of the plastic in the ocean remain poorly known.
After the abstracts were accepted (7 oral presentations and 1 poster), the session was organized around the main theme of modelling and tracking the circulation of macro-plastics and estimating the abundance of plastics (macro and micro) from the estuaries to the oceans.
One paper was withdrawn, and the oral session on March 1st 2022 was entirely virtual. Half of the session was dedicated to the presentations and the other half to questions and answers. The session was correctly attended, provided the odd hours for some countries. The presentations are still available on the OSM website (for registered members) at: https://osm2022.secure-platform.com/a/solicitations/3/sessiongallery/schedule/items/99.
The following topics were addressed:
- Tracking marine litter with a global ocean model: Where does it go? Where does it come from?
Eric Chassignet, Florida State University, USA
Microplastics in estuarine waters: surface layer vs. water column
Daniel González-Fernández, University of Cádiz, Spain
- Plastic PPE litter on beaches estimating abundance through Citizen Science and standardized sampling techniques
Bonnie Ertel, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, USA
· Monitoring and modelling the circulation of marine debris: the case study of riverine inputs from Indonesia
Christophe Maes, IRD-CNRS-IFREMER-UBO, LOPS Brest, France
- Numerical Model Approach on Vertical Motion of Microplastics absorbed into Algae Aggregations
Miho Yoshitake, Kyushu University, Research Institute for Applied Mechanics, Kyushu University
- Distribution variability and dynamics of Microplastics in water and biota along Southern Mediterranean Coasts
Sana Ben Ismail, INSTM, Research Council, Institute for the Study of Anthropic Impact and Sustainability in the Marine Environment, Genova, Italy
Suleman Mazhar has been working as a professor in Information & Communication Engineering at Harbin Engineering University (China) since July 2019. He did PhD from Tokyo University (Japan) and postdoctorate from Georgetown University (Washington DC, USA). He had BS-CS from FAST-NUCES (Lahore) and MS from GIK Institute (Pakistan). He is TYSP young scientist fellow (Ministry of Science & Technology China) and have won several research grants from international organizations such as DAAD (Germany), ICIMOD (Nepal), NRPU (Higher Education Commission Pakistan), WWF (Worldwide Fund for Nature) Pakistan. His research focus is deep learning and signal processing applications for environmental monitoring, with particular focus on underwater acoustics, and marine mammal conservation. He is a reviewer for professional journals such as Journal of Acoustical Society (America), IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE Sensors Journal, Applied Acoustics, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.
Peng Ren is a full professor with the College of Oceanography and Space Informatics, China University of Petroleum (East China). He is the director of Qingdao International Research Center for Intelligent Forecast and Detection of Oceanic Catastrophes. He received the K. M. Scott Prize from the University of York, the Natural Science award (first rank) from China Institute of Electronics, and the Eduardo Caianiello Best Student Paper Award from 18th International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing as one co-author. He has served as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.
Mohd Rizal Arshad is a full professor at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Malaysia, where he specializes in ocean robotics technology and intelligent system. He received his B.Eng. in Medical Electronics & Instrumentation and PhD in Electronic Engineering from University of Liverpool, UK in 1994 and 1999, respectively. He completed his MSc. in Electronic Control Engineering from the University of Salford, UK in Dec 1995. He has supervised many postgraduate students and published extensively in local and international publications. He is a senior member of the IEEE, and was awarded IEEE OES Presidential Award in 2019.
Itzik Klein is an Assistant Professor, heading the Autonomous Navigation and Sensor Fusion Lab, at the Charney School of Marine Sciences, Hatter Department of Marine Technologies, University of Haifa. He is an IEEE Senior Member and a member of the IEEE Journal of Indoor and Seamless Positioning and Navigation (J-ISPIN) Editorial Board. Prior to joining the University of Haifa, he worked at leading companies in Israel on navigation topics for more than 15 years. He has a wide range of experience in navigation systems and sensor fusion from both industry and academic perspectives. His research interests lie in the intersection of artificial intelligence with inertial sensing, sensor fusion, and autonomous underwater vehicles.
John R. Potter (IEEE M’94, SM’02, F’18) graduated in the previous century with a joint honours Mathematics and Physics Degree from Bristol and a PhD. in Glaciology and Oceanography from Cambridge, UK studying Antarctic ice mass balance, where he spent four consecutive summers. This work helped underscore the non-linear fragility of polar ice to climate change and led to him receiving the Polar Medal from Queen Elizabeth II in 1988.
Nick is a Visiting Fellow at the UK National Oceanographic Center, Southampton His nomination was endorsed by the Underwater Acoustics Technology Committee. He had worked as a Research Associate and Lecturer at University of Birmingham and has been working as a Research Scientist at the Applied Research Laboratory, University of Texas, Austin. He has also served as a Program Officer at the Office of Naval Research Global. He is a senior member of IEEE (OES) and a Fellow of Acoustical Society of America (ASA). Nick has also been serving as Assoc. Editor for IEEE JoE and JASA. He is widely acknowledged for his expertise are seabed acoustics, parametric array modeling, sonar beamformer, underwater signal processing.
Maurizio Migliaccio (M’91-SM’00-F’17) is Full professor of Electromagnetics at Università di Napoli Parthenope (Italy) and was Affiliated Full Professor at NOVA Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, FL (USA). He has been teaching Microwave Remote Sensing since 1994. He was visiting scientist at Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fur Lüft und Raumfahrt (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. He was member of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) scientific committee. He was member of the ASI CosmoSkyMed second generation panel. He was e-geos AdCom member. He was Italian delegate of the ESA PB-EO board. He was Member of South Africa Expert Review Panel for Space Exploration. He serves as reviewer for the UE, Italian Research Ministry (MIUR), NCST, Kazakhstan and Hong Kong Research board. He lectured in USA, Canada, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Germany, Spain, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Italy. He was Italian delegate at UE COST SMOS Mode Action. He is listed in the Italian Top Scientists. He is an IEEE Trans. Geoscience and Remote Sensing AE, International Journal of Remote Sensing AE, and was IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering AE Special Issue on Radar for Marine and Maritime Remote Sensing, IEEE JSTARS AE of the Special Issue on CosmoSKyMed, Member of the Indian Journal of Radio & Space Physics Editorial board. His main current scientific interests cover SAR sea oil slick and man-made target monitoring, remote sensing for marine and coastal applications, remote sensing for agriculture monitoring, polarimetry, inverse problems for resolution enhancement, reverberating chambers. He published about 160 peer-reviewed journal papers on remote sensing and applied electromagnetics.
He has developed various types of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and related application technologies including navigation methods, a new sensing method using a chemical sensor, precise seafloor mapping methods, a precise seabed positioning system with a resolution of a few centimeters, a new sensing system of the thickness of cobalt-rich crust; and more. He has shown, by using these technologies that AUVs are practicable and valuable tools for deep-sea exploration.
Donna Kocak has had an outstanding career in defense and scientific projects developing and applying solutions in subsea optics, imaging and robotics. She graduated with an M.Sc in Computer Science in 1997 from the University of Central Florida; an MBA in 2008 from the University of Florida; and M.Sc in Industrial Engineering in 2011 from the University of Central Florida. She is currently a Senior Scientist, Advanced Concepts Engineering, and Fellow at the Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Florida, where she has developed novel optical imaging and communication solutions for under-sea defense and scientific projects. Prior to 2008 Donna Kocak was Founder and President of Green Sky Imaging, LLC (GSI) who developed laser/video photogrammetry software for underwater inspection and survey. Her earlier career positions were with Naval Training Systems Center, Florida; Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Florida; eMerge Interactive; and the Advanced Technologies Group in Florida.
John Potter has a Joint Honours degree in Mathematics and Physics from Bristol University in the UK and a PhD in Glaciology and Oceanography from the University of Cambridge on research in the Antarctic, for which he was awarded the Polar Medal in 1988. John has worked on polar oceanography, underwater acoustics, ambient noise (including imaging), marine mammals, communications, IoUT, autonomous vehicles and strategic development. He has 40 years’ international experience working at the British Antarctic Survey in the UK, NATO in Italy, SIO in California, NUS in Singapore and most recently at NTNU in Norway. John is a Fellow of the IEEE and MTS, an Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE OES Distinguished Lecturer, PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer & an International Fellow of the Explorer’s Club.
Dr. James V. Candy is the Chief Scientist for Engineering and former Director of the Center for Advanced Signal & Image Sciences at the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Candy received a commission in the USAF in 1967 and was a Systems Engineer/Test Director from 1967 to 1971. He has been a Researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since 1976 holding various positions including that of Project Engineer for Signal Processing and Thrust Area Leader for Signal and Control Engineering. Educationally, he received his B.S.E.E. degree from the University of Cincinnati and his M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is a registered Control System Engineer in the state of California. He has been an Adjunct Professor at San Francisco State University, University of Santa Clara, and UC Berkeley, Extension teaching graduate courses in signal and image processing. He is an Adjunct Full-Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Candy is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and elected as a Life Member (Fellow) at the University of Cambridge (Clare Hall College). He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu and Phi Kappa Phi honorary societies. He was elected as a Distinguished Alumnus by the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Candy received the IEEE Distinguished Technical Achievement Award for the “development of model-based signal processing in ocean acoustics.” Dr. Candy was selected as a IEEE Distinguished Lecturer for oceanic signal processing as well as presenting an IEEE tutorial on advanced signal processing available through their video website courses. He was nominated for the prestigious Edward Teller Fellowship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Candy was awarded the Interdisciplinary Helmholtz-Rayleigh Silver Medal in Signal Processing/Underwater Acoustics by the Acoustical Society of America for his technical contributions. He has published over 225 journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports as well as written three texts in signal processing, “Signal Processing: the Model-Based Approach,” (McGraw-Hill, 1986), “Signal Processing: the Modern Approach,” (McGraw-Hill, 1988), “Model-Based Signal Processing,” (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2006) and “Bayesian Signal Processing: Classical, Modern and Particle Filtering” (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2009). He was the General Chairman of the inaugural 2006 IEEE Nonlinear Statistical Signal Processing Workshop held at the Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge. He has presented a variety of short courses and tutorials sponsored by the IEEE and ASA in Applied Signal Processing, Spectral Estimation, Advanced Digital Signal Processing, Applied Model-Based Signal Processing, Applied Acoustical Signal Processing, Model-Based Ocean Acoustic Signal Processing and Bayesian Signal Processing for IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society/ASA. He has also presented short courses in Applied Model-Based Signal Processing for the SPIE Optical Society. He is currently the IEEE Chair of the Technical Committee on “Sonar Signal and Image Processing” and was the Chair of the ASA Technical Committee on “Signal Processing in Acoustics” as well as being an Associate Editor for Signal Processing of ASA (on-line JASAXL). He was recently nominated for the Vice Presidency of the ASA and elected as a member of the Administrative Committee of IEEE OES. His research interests include Bayesian estimation, identification, spatial estimation, signal and image processing, array signal processing, nonlinear signal processing, tomography, sonar/radar processing and biomedical applications.
Kenneth Foote is a Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from The George Washington University in 1968, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University in 1973. He was an engineer at Raytheon Company, 1968-1974; postdoctoral scholar at Loughborough University of Technology, 1974-1975; research fellow and substitute lecturer at the University of Bergen, 1975-1981. He began working at the Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, in 1979; joined the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1999. His general area of expertise is in underwater sound scattering, with applications to the quantification of fish, other aquatic organisms, and physical scatterers in the water column and on the seafloor. In developing and transitioning acoustic methods and instruments to operations at sea, he has worked from 77°N to 55°S.
René Garello, professor at Télécom Bretagne, Fellow IEEE, co-leader of the TOMS (Traitements, Observations et Méthodes Statistiques) research team, in Pôle CID of the UMR CNRS 3192 Lab-STICC.
Professor Mal Heron is Adjunct Professor in the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, and is CEO of Portmap Remote Ocean Sensing Pty Ltd. His PhD work in Auckland, New Zealand, was on radio-wave probing of the ionosphere, and that is reflected in his early ionospheric papers. He changed research fields to the scattering of HF radio waves from the ocean surface during the 1980s. Through the 1990s his research has broadened into oceanographic phenomena which can be studied by remote sensing, including HF radar and salinity mapping from airborne microwave radiometers . Throughout, there have been one-off papers where he has been involved in solving a problem in a cognate area like medical physics, and paleobiogeography. Occasionally, he has diverted into side-tracks like a burst of papers on the effect of bushfires on radio communications. His present project of the Australian Coastal Ocean Radar Network (ACORN) is about the development of new processing methods and applications of HF radar data to address oceanography problems. He is currently promoting the use of high resolution VHF ocean radars, based on the PortMap high resolution radar.
Hanu Singh graduated B.S. ECE and Computer Science (1989) from George Mason University and Ph.D. (1995) from MIT/Woods Hole.He led the development and commercialization of the Seabed AUV, nine of which are in operation at other universities and government laboratories around the world. He was technical lead for development and operations for Polar AUVs (Jaguar and Puma) and towed vehicles(Camper and Seasled), and the development and commercialization of the Jetyak ASVs, 18 of which are currently in use. He was involved in the development of UAS for polar and oceanographic applications, and high resolution multi-sensor acoustic and optical mapping with underwater vehicles on over 55 oceanographic cruises in support of physical oceanography, marine archaeology, biology, fisheries, coral reef studies, geology and geophysics and sea-ice studies. He is an accomplished Research Student advisor and has made strong collaborations across the US (including at MIT, SIO, Stanford, Columbia LDEO) and internationally including in the UK, Australia, Canada, Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan, India, Sweden and Norway. Hanu Singh is currently Chair of the IEEE Ocean Engineering Technology Committee on Autonomous Marine Systems with responsibilities that include organizing the biennial IEEE AUV Conference, 2008 onwards. Associate Editor, IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, 2007-2011. Associate editor, Journal of Field Robotics 2012 onwards.
Milica Stojanovic graduated from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, in 1988, and received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Northeastern University in Boston, in 1991 and 1993. She was a Principal Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 2008 joined Northeastern University, where she is currently a Professor of electrical and computer engineering. She is also a Guest Investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Milica’s research interests include digital communications theory, statistical signal processing and wireless networks, and their applications to underwater acoustic systems. She has made pioneering contributions to underwater acoustic communications, and her work has been widely cited. She is a Fellow of the IEEE, and serves as an Associate Editor for its Journal of Oceanic Engineering (and in the past for Transactions on Signal Processing and Transactions on Vehicular Technology). She also serves on the Advisory Board of the IEEE Communication Letters, and chairs the IEEE Ocean Engineering Society’s Technical Committee for Underwater Communication, Navigation and Positioning. Milica is the recipient of the 2015 IEEE/OES Distinguished Technical Achievement Award.
Dr. Paul C. Hines was born and raised in Glace Bay, Cape Breton. From 1977-1981 he attended Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, graduating with a B.Sc. (Hon) in Engineering-Physics.