OSIL Buoy for Coastal Erosion Project

Ocean Scientific International Ltd (OSIL) have supplied a 1.2m data buoy platform to the “ORION” joint research and development center for use as a real-time monitoring station on an EU-funded project managing coastal erosion.

The Harmonized Coastal Corrosion Management Framework for Enhancing the Implementation of the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Protocol (HERMES) project required a platform with the ability to record a full profile of water column currents, tidal variations, wave parameters (significant wave height, wave period & propagation direction) & estimated suspended particular matter (SPM) concentrations, with the data transmitted to a base station on land in real time, complete with software to analyse and process the data with a graphical display.

The OSIL 1.2m Tern buoy offers a high visibility platform with a GPRS communication system ideally suited to the installation location given the proximity to the shore and a popular wreck diving site. The robust buoy is equipped with a seabed mounted Nortek AWAC to provide three-dimensional current profiles in cells with thicknesses from 0.25 to 4m. The ADCP is additionally furnished with a Prolog board for internal wave processing, and it can also be used to estimate suspended sediment loads by correlating the acoustic back scatter intensity to a site specific suspended sediment calibration.

The base station software provided by OSIL gives the end users extensive control over the data displayed from the monitoring buoy, highlighting OSIL’s ability to tailor individual buoy systems to meet specific project requirements.