Award Data

Fog and smog reduce visibility at sea, greatly impacting ship navigation and safety. Low visibility marine conditions decrease speed and safety of commercial fleets and increase costs through poor fuel load planning. The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the importance of maritime operations to the supply chain; therefore, decreasing associated cost and risk are of the utmost importance. Applied Ocean ...

"Metron proposes to develop user-friendly software to promote understanding of impacts due to cascading climate hazards and extreme weather events, in collaboration with George Mason University (GMU). Climate and extreme weather (CEW) hazards pose significant risks to life and property. As extreme events become more prevalent, risks associated with cascading, compound events come to the fore, such ...

The primary objective of this project is to improve awareness, safety and enjoyment for mariners in coastal and inland waters by the creation of a participatory sensor network (PSN) that facilitates sharing of marine observations with other mariners. We are adding a new degree of temporal fidelity to nautical charts and maps. The approach leverages volunteered geographic information to augment con ...

Many municipalities in the United States have begun to use impermeability measurements to incentivize storm water retention as part of the architectural and landscaping design process. These measurements are performed through analysis of high-resolution aerial photography and updated on an annual or semi-annual basis. The practice of using high resolution aerial or even satellite photography is pr ...

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) represent a significant problem for the Blue Economy, adversely affecting drinking water, commercial fisheries, water recreation, and tourism. Early detection of HABs is crucial in mitigating their effects. We propose to continue our development of HABSSED (Harmful Algal Bloom Surveillance by Sequencing of Environmental DNA) into the prototyping phase. The HABSSED pipel ...

The primary objective of the proposed endeavor is to build a community-driven marine coastal data harvesting ecosystem that not only provides a benefit to the individuals within the coastal community, but also enhances the data quality, completeness and timeliness of maritime safety and navigation databases. The approach leverages volunteered geographic information to motivate dataset generation f ...

The Ocean Color and Cloud Monitor (OCCaM) is a hyperspectral based instrument suite with ocean color and cloud observational capabilities. Following the successful Phase I SBIR design period, the Phase II effort will focus on the integration of the Phase I design into a benchtop unit for testing and validation of the design concept. The payload was designed to meet the SWaP requirements of a comme ...

This proposal addresses subtopic 9.6.01, Low-cost Oceanic and Atmospheric Sensors and Observing Systems. It is proposed that two instruments for measuring atmospheric aerosols be commercialized to operate automatically and routinely. Both instruments have been used in research settings for many years and share several aspects of technology. They could both be commercialized with significant advant ...

Enabling BLOS operations in the National Airspace System is largely an issue of improved sensing. Under the UTM rules, BLOS operations require performance authorization from the FAA centered around navigation, communications, sharing of intent, avoiding other aircraft, and connecting to the FAA in near real-time. The current plan initially is for these performance metrics to be evaluated by the FA ...

The decline of coral reefs can be feasibly reversed by introducing coral transplants that are stabilized via adhesion to substrates. An adhesive is under development to safely and economically improve the speed and success rate of stabilizing coral transplants. This adhesive comprises a bioactive inorganic and an organic polymer constituent that function synergistically to enable rapid and control ...