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Japan Chapter – Workshop on Scientific Use of Submarine Cables & Related Technology
Reported by Harumi Sugimatsu, OES-J Vice chair
The SSC Workshop
We had the second domestic workshop on SSC (Scientific Use of Submarine Cables & Related Technology) on 22nd November 2019 at the convention hall of the Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo. Speakers and audiences, more than 160 attendees, were enjoying a variety of talks and discussions about the potential use of the seafloor cable network system and its future vision. The discussed topics were as follows:
- N-net: the new seafloor network system for earthquakes and tsunamis along the Nankai Trough *Keynote
- Submarine cable network system along the Suruga bay
- Tsunami early warningprediction on the Hamaoka nuclear power plant
- A new cable laying ship “KDDI Cable Infinity”
- Development of Ocean Bottom Cable (OBC) for seismic observation
- Social implementation of the submarine cabled observatory– Joint project with a Scottish company
- Future prospects of seafloor crustal movement and earthquake observations using the submarine fiber optic cables
- Seafloor neutrinos detector to measure the deep earth data
- Effective utilization of the data measured by the Seafloor Observation Network for Earthquakes and Tsunamis along the Japan Trench (S-net) – Detection of Fin Whale songs recorded from the ocean bottom seismometers
- Submarine cabled observatory networks as “The Ocean Information Station”
- Panel discussion: How to expand the utilization of the submarine cable network system in future?
The next SSC workshop will be held in the summer of 2020. In addition, the special sessions will be organized at the OES sponsored international symposium on “UT21” in Tokyo.
See you there!
UT21 URL: http://www.ut2021.org
The Second IEEE OES Japan Chapter Youngster Robocon Support Program Award Ceremony
IEEE OES Japan Chapter has been offering the students travel support program to challenge the SAUVC since 2018. The second winner’s award ceremony was held just after the workshop. The winner is the “HIT-Robotics” team from Hiroshima Institute of Technology. Jonghyun Ahn, a supervisor of the team, received the award from Katuyoshi Kawaguchi (OES-J Chair) on behalf of the team members. Congratulations to all!
A Sequel
The team has passed the qualifying round for the SAUVC 2020 which is held from 3-6 April, 2020, just before the OCEANS 2020 Singapore (https://sauvc.org/#competition). If you see them at the SAUVC 2020 in Singapore, cheer for them!
Canadian Atlantic Section (OES – CAS)
Reported by Ferial El-Hawary, IEEE Life Fellow, Chapter Chair, and Dirk Werle, IEEE Senior Member, CAS Section Chair
Tidal Energy Presentation a Highlight at the 2019 Annual General Meeting of the IEEE Canadian Atlantic Section
The IEEE Canadian Atlantic Section held its Annual General Meeting on December 5, 2019, in Halifax. True to our maritime roots, the Chapter opted for a suitable venue by inviting our members to congregate at the well-established meeting facilities of the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron on the Northwest Arm.
We were delighted to welcome as keynote speakers at the AGM two prominent members of the ocean engineering community, John Woods, P. Eng., of Minas Energy and Tony Wright of the Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy, FORCE. The title of their richly illustrated talk was “Perspectives on Tidal Energy Development in Nova Scotia.” In her capacity as outgoing OES Chapter Chair, Ferial El-Hawary was instrumental in inviting the speakers to the meeting.
Tony Wright’s presentation offered a FORCE-ful point-of-view on tidal power development and the challenge of “working in water that moves over 20 kilometers an hour.” Tony relayed his experience as general manager at FORCE, a public-private partnership studying the performance and interaction of tidal energy turbines in the Bay of Fundy. His professional background combines an MBA degree and an engineering degree. Prior to joining FORCE in 2012 he spent more than two decades as a career officer in the Royal Canadian Navy.
John Woods focused his talk on two of the FORCE berths from a developer’s perspective. They include a total of 21 x 420 MW units, connected in two arrays. He also highlighted issues of interconnectivity. John presented his talk based on more than three decades of experience as an entrepreneurial engineer, as alderman of the City of Dartmouth, and as a manager to realize important energy opportunities. His professional competence and skill of a community leader have advanced innovative engineering designs and creative solutions to business and political issues related to energy development. John was very pleased to see the younger and aspiring members of the engineering profession in the audience since he has also mentored many Dalhousie engineering students as a lecturer on “Engineers in Society” over the past two decades.
In 2019, OES-CAS Chapter’s Secretary, Christopher Whitt, co-organized two additional lectures. Both events were very well attended and deemed a success also for networking and highlighting OEC activities in the region. Here is a summary of the events.
On April 15, 2019, Dr. Martin Siderius, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Portland State University delivered a Distinguished Lecture on the topic of “Underwater Communications: Challenges of the Acoustic Propagation Channel.” The event was hosted in cooperation with Dalhousie Engineering at the Center for Ocean Ventures and Entrepreneurship, COVE, in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
On October 15, Christopher Whitt delivered a lecture on “Passive Acoustics for Ocean Observations.” Christopher is a project scientist at JASCO Applied Sciences and currently a member of the OES AdCom. His talk was the first in the Dalhousie Oceanography-Engineering Research Seminar (DOERS) series. It was a co-presentation between iMERIT, IEEE and the Department of Oceanography.
Malaysia Chapter
The 11th National Technical Seminar on Unmanned System Technology 2019 (NUSYS’19)
Reported by Zainah Md. Zain & Khalid Isa
On 2-3rd December 2019, the IEEE Ocean Engineering Society (OES) Malaysia Chapter organized The 11th National Technical Seminar on Unmanned System Technology 2019 (NUSYS’19) aimed at presenting current research being carried out in the listed area. The idea of the seminar is for the scientists, scholars, engineers, and students from Universities in Malaysia and the industry to present ongoing research activities, and hence to foster research relations between the Universities and industries. The seminar provides opportunities for the delegates to exchange new ideas and application experiences face to face, to establish business or research relations and to find global partners for future collaboration. The seminar offers a number of invited lectures from renowned speakers all over the country. NUSYS’19 is the premier interdisciplinary platform for the presentation of new advances and research results in the fields of Unmanned System Technology. The seminar brings together leading scientists, researchers, engineers, scholars, and students in the domain of interest from around the world.
IEEE OES Malaysia Chapter Industrial Talk on Underwater Survey Operation
Reported by Khalid Isa & Herdawatie Abdul Kadir
Mr. Mohd Fairuz is currently Fugro’s Project Manager, overseeing and responsible for the company’s geophysics survey project in the Asia Pacific. Before joining Fugro, Mr. Fairuz had worked as Business Development Manager with a Malaysian survey company, where he was responsible for spearheading the effort in developing the Geophysical business line in line with technical expertise. Prior to this, he has previously worked as an Engineer, Senior Engineer & AUV Supervisor since 2007, with a career in the offshore geophysical survey spanning 11 years throughout the globe with several local and international companies. Mr. Mohd Fairuz is notably involved as one of Fugro’s Lead Engineer for the largest underwater survey operation in the world, the MH370 search.
Collaboration Meeting with Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre
Reported by Herdawatie Abdul Kadir
On Tuesday, Feb 11th, 2020, a collaboration meeting with Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (KLCC) was held to bid for the 7th IEEE OES International Symposium on Underwater Technology (UT) 2023 and 11th Oceans’ Asia Pacific 2026. The meeting was held to explore collaboration opportunities. Early discussions identified possible ideas/benefits of the collaboration. There are many opportunities given by the Malaysia Convention & Exhibition Bureau (MyCEB) and KLCC. The KL Convention Centre works very closely with their strategic partner, Malaysia Convention & Exhibition Bureau (MyCEB), to provide financial and non-financial support to the national / international associations to bring their regional / international conferences to Malaysia.
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.