Research Vessel Fleet Research Articles

Арктическая научная дипломатия США и Канады: сравнительный анализ

The article examines the U.S. and Canadian Arctic Science Diplomacy (ASD) in a comparative perspective. The authors have identified the main reasons – scientific and geopolitical – for the use of the ASD in the region by these two countries, as well as by key state and non-state actors involved in its coordination and implementation. The ASD priorities for both countries include climate change implications, environmental problems, oceanography, geophysics, glaciology, permafrost, Arctic flora and fauna, conservation of biodiversity, Arctic shipping and transport infrastructure, rational use of Arctic mineral and biological resources, local communities, indigenous peoples, integration of traditional knowledge into science, and so on. Based on the analysis, it was found that both the USA and Canada recognize the important role of the Arctic Science Diplomacy in the successful implementation of their Arctic strategy and consider this kind of “non-traditional” public diplomacy to be a rather significant resource of their policy in the Far North. The Canadian ASD has to a greater extent an internal rather than an external orientation, while the U.S. ASD basically serves as an instrument of promotion of American national interests in the region. However, the United States pay less attention to the Arctic Science Diplomacy than Canada. The American ASD infrastructure (including the research centers and polar stations network as well as the research vessel fleet) is less developed than the Canadian one. In addition, in the U.S. strategic documents on the Arctic, unlike Canadian strategies, the coercive component is most clearly traced, which makes the United States a less attractive international partner and imposes certain restrictions on the participation of American ASD actors in Arctic cooperation. Moreover, the United States is very suspicious of the ASD of those regional “players” whom they have listed as unfriendly states (including Russia and China), which also serves as an obstacle to the development of Washington’s scientific cooperation with international partners in the Far North.

Improving Research Infrastructure in Indonesia through Public Private Partnership (PPP)

The government continues to boost infrastructure development through different financing schemes, such as Public Private Partnership (PPP). The private sector is encouraged to participate in infrastructure development under this strategy, indirectly reducing the government's burden. National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), formerly known as the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), as a government organization engaged in research, has chosen the PPP scheme for the Management and Development of the National Research Vessel Fleet to strengthen the capacity of the research infrastructure. This paper was written as a descriptive qualitative investigation using the literature study approach and relevant policy/regulatory literature. Also explains the need for research infrastructure, in this case, research vessels in Indonesia and provides an overview of the revenue potential and risk analysis in PPP projects. The result of this paper also provides an overview of BRIN's PPP implementation process. It can address issues such as whether the PPP scheme for research infrastructure development is of the PPP character, where the process is purely business-managed, how risk sharing is carried out in the PPP and how BRIN implements PPPs.

IEOOS: the Spanish Institute of Oceanography Observing System

Abstract. Since its foundation, 100 years ago, the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO) has been observing and measuring the ocean characteristics. Here is a summary of the initiatives of the IEO in the field of the operational oceanography. Some systems like the tide gauges network has been working for more than 70 years. The standard sections began at different moments depending on the local projects, and nowadays there are more than 180 coastal stations and deep-sea ones that are systematically sampled, obtaining physical and biochemical measurements. At this moment, the Observing System includes six permanent moorings equipped with current meters, an open-sea ocean-meteorological buoy offshore Santander and a sea-surface temperature satellite image station. It also supports the Spanish contribution to the Argo international programme with 47 deployed profilers, and continuous monitoring thermosalinometers, meteorological stations and vessel-mounted acoustic Doppler current profilers on the research vessel fleet. The system is completed with the contribution to the Northwest Iberian peninsula and Gibraltar observatories, and the development of regional prediction models. All these systematic measurements allow the IEO to give responses to ocean research activities, official agencies requirements and industrial and main society demands such as navigation, resource management, risks management, recreation, as well as for management development pollution-related economic activities or marine ecosystems. All these networks are linked to international initiatives, framed largely in supranational programmes of Earth observation sponsored by the United Nations or the European Union. The synchronic observation system permits a spatio-temporal description of some events, such as new deep water formation in the Mediterranean Sea and the injection of heat to intermediate waters in the Bay of Biscay after some colder northern storms in winter 2005.

Bridging semantically different paradigms in the field of marine acquisition event logging

To use data proficiently and efficiently, scientists require comprehensive metadata. This is very difficult to reconstruct conceptually, positionally and temporally far from the time and place of data acquisition. The European Commission funded Eurofleets project, whose mission is to build an integrated European oceanographic research vessel fleet, is developing a system that aims to address this issue by capturing metadata in a uniform way at time of observation. As this is a European-wide initiative, the problems associated with the desired level of integration are also broad. Having so many partners, different paradigms, schools, practices and vocabularies must be taken into consideration. Assuming that this divergence is natural and even somehow positive in the perspective of adapting to a changing environment, we detail how bridging can take place using a systemic approach. In the Eurofleets experience, this relied on the definition of a boundary object: that is an artifact that can be used by each of the diverging communities, since it embeds the core, shared conceptual entities. The structure of the boundary object is based on an event model, its ontology and the controlled vocabularies linked to it. All conceptual entities, and indeed the structure of the boundary object itself, resulted from wide discussions among the divergent communities. These discussions, allowed the extension of meaning from a semantic perspective to the pragmatic scope, where theoretical and cultural matters can also be considered, so that, eventually, the knowledge represented by the boundary object is more likely to be understood across the divergent communities. To exploit the possibilities offered by the boundary object, specific software has been developed that, using the event model and ontology, allows easier deployment across the project partners of a system intended to address the heterogeneity of the research vessel fleet. In this paper we describe in detail the underlying ontology.

First‐year performance assessment of SWATH Research Ship

The first small waterplane area twin hull (SWATH) design ship in the U.S. academic research vessel fleet, the R/V Kilo Moana (Figure 1), entered service in September 2002. The ship, whose home port is in Honolulu, has been operating with diverse groups of oceanographers on board. Before the ship became operational, the University National Oceanographic Laboratory System Fleet Improvement Committee (UNOLS‐ FIC) decided that it was important to gather fair and representative impressions of the vessel's performance from the first scientists on board. Science mission requirements developed over the past year by UNOLS have all indicated that sea‐keeping is a very high priority: oceano graphers wanted to work comfortably at higher sea states. Just about the only way to achieve this is by using the SWATH design rather than the mono‐hull.

Europe may pool marine research efforts

paris Three marine research agencies in Europe are planning to create a unified European fleet of research vessels with a common scientific programme.

More statements of candidates for section president‐elect

Oceanography, as a field and as a section, has over the last decade consisted of a disparate assemblage of interests united mainly by a generally academic orientation and a reliance upon the availability of ships for research. The field seems to be in a time of substantial if not profound change. The part of the change that commands most attention and concern is the evidence of shortages that are appearing. One shortage is that of the number of well‐prepared graduate students, the root of the traditional academic system, entering the field. Another is the threat of a substantially diminished research vessel fleet.

Problems for the academic fleet

With the changes in ocean science and global economics of the 1980's has come a set of serious problems for the academic fleet of research vessels. Over half the ships now operating in oceanographic research are over 10 years old. They are not fuel efficient, and some are worn out. Strong opinions abound as to the proper size of an ideal ship for the 1980's. Memories of the voyages of the famous sailing ship Atlantis, which was replaced by the modern research ship Atlantis II, built in 1963 (the Vema, built in 1923, is still operating), give way now to concepts of modern ocean science projects being undertaken by satellites, coastal research (including the coastal margins) being concentrated, and research of the oceans being done on land.

IMP Joins Scripps Fleet

The Instrumented Mobile Platform (IMP), a 17‐foot, remote‐controlled, modified Ryan Firefish target boat has joined the fleet of research vessels serving Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. IMP will be equipped with an echo‐sounder and will operate this spring along with Scripps' largest research ship, the Argo, as a ‘slave’ unit, obtaining ocean soundings between San Diego and Tokyo. Although IMP represents a second, fully manned ship, it eliminates the costs of such a second ship