OCEANS 2021 San Diego – Porto
Virtual component, Porto
Conference report
António Pascoal, LARSyS, IST, Portugal, Co-Chair
Eduardo Silva, INESC-TEC, ISEP, Portugal. Co-Chair
Fausto Ferreira, LABUST, UNIZG, Croatia, Technical Committee Co-chair
João Tasso de Figueiredo Borges de Sousa, LSTS, FEUP, Co-Chair
Introduction
The OCEANS 2021 San Diego – Porto virtual component included lively presentations and discussions on oceans-related issues and evoked the magic of the oceans spanning centuries of maritime history. The Porto virtual component complemented the in-person San Diego portion of this hybrid event, providing a dedicated forum for many attendees to participate in spite of travel constraints.
The Porto themes focused in two main topics:
Opening the Ocean Frontier: A New Age of Discoveries
Ocean science and technology for the benefit of humankind.
The innovative Porto virtual component program included technical sessions, invited sessions on specialized topics, plenary sessions, a student poster competition, outreach media sessions, and discussion panels. The Porto component was all about connecting the world-wide community with the goals of opening the ocean frontier at the dawn of a new age of discoveries for the benefit of mankind. There were new forms of participation, namely of young students and researchers from distant communities bordering the world’s oceans, thus reinforcing the global dimension of the event.
OCEANS 2021 Porto virtual component was very well aligned with the surge of Portuguese interest in the oceans that comes from the recognition that Portugal harbors unique environments in the deep sea, as well as in the water column, and holds tremendous potential for the installation and operation of offshore wind/wave energy harvesting infrastructures and aquaculture farms. The conference was also very well aligned with the Atlantic International Research Centre (AIR Centre) initiative launched by the Portuguese government to foster a long-term multilateral platform for cooperation along and across the Atlantic with an inclusive perspective on S&T and economic development.
More information about the Conference can be found at the website: https://global21.oceansconference.org/
OCEANS 2021 Porto virtual component by the numbers
The OCEANS 2021 Porto virtual component had a significant number of submissions and participants:
- 428 abstract submissions
- 14 finalists of the student poster competition
- 325 abstracts accepted for oral presentation
- 16 abstracts accepted for poster presentation
- 51 abstracts accepted available on-demand only
- 36 participating countries
- 513 registrations
Oceans 2021 Porto virtual component attracted over 513 participants coming from academia, industry, governmental organizations, research institutes and private foundations.
Technical and poster sessions
Thanks to the remarkable work of a committed team of 186 reviewers from Europe, Asia, and North and South America, each submitted abstract was evaluated by 3 reviewers.
In total, 325 presentations were organized in the following technical sessions covering a wide range of topics of interest to the OCEANS community:
- Access, Custody, and Retrieval of Data
- Acoustic Telemetry and Communication
- Affordable Ocean Systems and Technologies
- Aquaculture Technology
- Array Signal Processing and Array Design
- Artificial Intelligence in Ocean Science and Technology
- Automatic Control
- Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
- Buoy Technology
- Classification and Pattern Recognition (Parametric and Non-parametric)
- Exploration of Extreme Oceanic Environments
- H2020 EU Marine Robots in action
- Hydrodynamics
- Hydrography / Seafloor mapping / Geodesy
- Imaging and Vision
- Marine Education and Literacy
- Marine GIS and Data Fusion
- Marine Law, Policy, Management and Education
- Marine Life and Ecosystems
- Marine Litter: monitoring and mitigation
- Numerical Modeling and Simulation
- Ocean Economic Potential
- Ocean Energy
- Oceanographic Instrumentation and Sensors
- Oceanography: physical, geological, chemical, biological
- Offshore Structures
- Remote Sensing
- Remotely Operated Vehicles
- Sonar and Transducers
- Sonar Imaging
- Sonar Signal Processing
- Systems and Observatories
- Underwater Acoustics and Acoustical Oceanography
- Underwater Robotics Competitions
- Vehicle Design
- Vehicle Navigation
The sessions were organized in 6 parallel tracks.
Opening session
The opening session included a welcome speech and four keynote speeches by four distinguished Portuguese leaders.
The welcome speech was delivered by the Porto Co-chairs, João Sousa, LSTS-FEUP, Portugal, Eduardo Silva, INESC-TEC-ISEP, Portugal and António Pascoal, LARSyS-IST, Portugal.
The keynote speeches were delivered by:
- Manuel Heitor, Portuguese Minister of Science and Technology and Higher Education
- Admiral Mendes Calado, Portuguese Navy Chief of Staff
- Miguel Miranda, Director Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA)
- Rear-Admiral Ventura Soares, Director of the Portuguese Hydrographic Institute.
Plenary sessions
OCEANS 2021 Porto virtual component included six plenaries:
Plenary 1 – 21st September, 10:00-11:00 am
“The challenges of deep-sea exploration”, by Pedro Madureira, Task Group for the Extension of the Portuguese Continental Shelf, Portugal
Plenary 2 – 21st September, 15:00-16:00 pm
“Exploring the seafloor and the midwater ocean with robots is a human adventure”, by Dana Yoerger, Senior Scientist, Dept of Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA
Plenary 3 – 22nd September, 08:00-09:00 am
“The Post-Mediaeval Shipwreck of Gnalić (Croatia) in the light of new discoveries”, by Irena Radić Rossi, Univ. Zadar, Croatia.
“Healthy Oceans and Maritime Cultural Heritage”, by Filipe Castro, Researcher, Centre for Functional Ecology – Science for People & the Planet (CFE), Univ. Coimbra, Portugal
Plenary 4 – 23rd September, 08:00-09:00 am
“Challenges in Deploying Robust Autonomy for Robotic Exploration in Marine Environments”, by Stefan Williams, School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering at the University of Sydney, Australian Centre for Field Robotics, Australia
Plenary 5 – 23rd September, 10:30-11:30 am
“Using integrated glider experiments to understand the scale sensitivity and variability of the Southern Ocean carbon system”, by Sandy Thomalla, Principal Scientist, Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observatory (SOCCO), CSIR, Cape Town, South Africa.
Plenary 6 – 23rd September, 16:30-17:30 am
“Marine Robotics in the Framework of European Research Infrastructure Programs” by the following panel of presenters:
- Jan Opberdecke, Unit for Underwater Systems at Ifremer, France
- João Borges de Sousa, Underwater Systems and Technologies Laboratory – LSTS, FEUP, Portugal
- Pere Ridao, Underwater Robotics Lab, Univ. Girona, Spain
- António Pascoal, LARSyS, IST, Univ, Lisbon, Portugal
- Niamh Flavin, Marine Institute, Galway, Ireland
- Rafel Garcia, Underwater Vision Lab, Univ. Girona, Spain
- Agnès Robin, European Commission, EU
Special San Diego-Porto joint session followed by a UN presentation and expert panel discussion.
OCEANS 2021 San Diego – Porto organized a joint session that culminated with a UN presentation and a UN Decade of the Oceans Expert Panel Discussion. The first part of the joint event counted with the participation of Dr. Ricardo Santos, the Portuguese Minister of the Sea, who gave a presentation highlighting the much needed connection between marine science and technology and the economy of the sea. Dr. Ricardo Santos offered his vision of what lies ahead of us in terms of national and international programs and, based on his experience as a member of the Executive Planning Committed for the Decade, provided a soft transition to the ensuing UN Presentation / Special UN Session.
Closing session
The OCEANS 2021 Porto virtual component closed with some final remarks by the three Co-Chairs, João Sousa, Eduardo Silva, and Antonio Pascoal, one of the Technical Committee Co-Chairs Fausto Ferreira, and Juan Carlos Luque, Univ.Nacional De San Agustín de Arequipa, Peru on behalf of traditionally underrepresented countries.
Reaching out to underrepresented countries: a Porto initiative
A sizable number of countries continue to have reduced presence in the OCEANS conferences, notwithstanding the excellent quality of the work pursued in a large number of highly reputed national institutions. The reason for this is manifold and defies a simple analysis. We felt strongly that our community as a whole would benefit enormously from a more representative participation of such countries with a view to knowing each other better and to give impetus to cooperative actions at the scientific, technical, commercial, environmental, and societal levels. As a contribution to meeting this goal, we encouraged the participation of what, for the lack of a better word, we may call under-represented countries, as a means to engage into fruitful discussions with groups therein that are keen to broaden their horizons on marine-related affairs and have taken solid steps in this direction. In a nutshell, a small but solid step towards a more inclusive Oceans community. This is especially relevant at a time when we are witnessing the call for intensive cooperation worldwide as envisioned in the implementation plan of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, 2021-2030.
In line with the above, we warmly invited our colleagues from traditionally under-represented countries to participate actively in the virtual component of OCEANS 2021: San Diego – Porto, hosted in Portugal by attending the technical and plenary sessions remotely, and participate in round-table discussions. As a token of encouragement and appreciation for their participation, we offered to waive, in cooperation with San Diego, the registration fees for a number of attendees from selected institutions from under-represented countries. The initiative attracted interest from a number of participants in Brazil, Peru, Russia, South Africa and Ivory Coast, Pakistan, and India. some of which attended a special session aimed at analyzing the impact of the initiative and recommending further steps to increase attendance of researchers from underrepresented countries in future editions of OCEANS.
The future
The Oceans community has been growing significantly over the last decade and is expected to continue growing at an accelerated pace. The OCEANS 2021 San Diego Porto conference explored uncharted waters in terms of hybrid formats and engagement of the worldwide community. The lessons learned from this conference and the innovative initiatives that were undertaken will certainly help shape the format of future events.
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.