R2O in NOAA's Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services

The ability of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to meet its mission through the delivery of continually improved products and services relies on the transition of the best available research and development (R&D) into operational products. NOAA’s policy on R&D transitions (NOAA 2016) adapted the NASA concept of Technology Readiness Levels (Mankins 1995) and mandated the development and use of formal transition plans, robust project management and a clear commitment to sustaining operations.

The Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS) is an office in NOAA that provides real time sustained observations of water levels, currents, physical oceanographic, and meteorological phenomena at over 300 locations around the nation’s coasts and Great Lakes. These systems comprise the National Water Level Observation Network (NWLON) and Physical Oceanographic Real-Time Systems (PORTS®). CO-OPS also measures currents during short-term current surveys under the National Current Observation Program (NCOP), supporting safe navigation through derived products such as national tidal current predictions.

CO-OPS houses a small team of research engineers and coastal scientists who engage with the broader coastal science community to discover, test and evaluate new and improved observing technologies to meet user needs. CO-OPS’ Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) efforts consist of testing and evaluating new individual system components and designing, developing, and testing new integrated measurement systems. Systems components can be oceanographic and meteorological sensors; non-sensor, individual system components associated with power, control, and data communications; and the structural components of platforms.

Transition plans at CO-OPS include the development of guidelines on integration, field installation manuals, and long term maintenance requirements and procedures. All transitions also include training for field operations personnel.

Examples of CO-OPS’ recent sensor transitions include radar tide gauges, bridge clearance radar (air-gap), new and improved acoustic Doppler current profilers, and conductivity-temperature sensors. Examples of recent measurement systems transitioned to operations include a new real-time currents and meteorological surface buoy (CURBY) and a variety of subsurface, moored ADCP buoy systems for NCOP.

Common challenges associated with transitions to operations in CO-OPS include ensuring continuity and integrity of long term-data records throughout sensor transitions, the need to repurpose resources from operational maintenance priorities, keeping up with significantly increasing numbers of new sensors/systems across a broad range of coastal environment types, and complexities associated with in-house integration of measurement systems with multiple custom features.

Finally, in order to sustain observing systems, CO-OPS has an engineering design team dedicated to survivability of systems in extreme coastal environments and has a published recapitalization plan to guide investment priorities in observing system platforms, sensors and infrastructure.

References

Mankins, John C. (6 April 1995). "Technology Readiness Levels: A White Paper" (PDF). NASA, Office of Space Access and Technology, Advanced Concepts Office. http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/trl/trl.pdf

NOAA (2016) NOAA Administrative Order 216-105B: Policy on Research and Development Transitions. https://www.noaa.gov/organization/administration/nao-216-105b-policy-on-research-and-development-transitions