We are conducting an Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) to test the capabilities of the National Science Foundation Ocean Observatory Initiative (OOI) CyberInfrastructure (CI) a distributed ocean observing networks in the Mid-Atlantic Bight.  Our goal is to provide a real oceanographic test bed in which the CI will support field operations of ships and mobile platforms, aggregate data from fixed platforms, shore-based radars, and satellites and offer these data streams to data assimilative forecast models. We will be using the NOAA MarCOOS, DoD ESPRESSO, and DHS Mid-Atlantic test bed to provide a test-bed in which to assess the CI capabilities before OOI field assets are deployed in the ocean.  Additionally this effort is particularly important for allowing the wider science community to use the evolving OOI CI, allowing them to provide critical feedback during its spiral development cycles of the OOI CI.

What is the OSSE testing?

The OOI CI strategically provides a stack of software services called Cyberinfrastructure Points of Presence (CyberPoPs).  The CyberPoPs can be deployed as needed at any computation location, from central datacenter servers, to data processing hardware, marine infrastructure nodes and onboard instrument platforms. The available resources (computation, communication bandwidth, online shore connectivity, power, storage) at each location determine which services can be deployed and which capabilities can be offered. The CI will operate a central installation that provides all services and access to extensive computational and storage resources.  Deployable services include interfaces to storage and computation resources, instrument access and data acquisition, data processing, event detection and mission planning and control. For instance on an AUV, a CyberPoP can be deployed that performs sensor data acquisition, buffering, processing for environmental condition detection and local (embedded) mission planning and control. For this effort functionality of the CyberPOPs to coordinate the mission scheduling and coordination capabilities in a real-world situations will be tested.  The efforts will focus on the testing the CIs ability to conduct planning & prosecution and mission planning (see Figure).

For this OSSE we will test the CI’s ability to provide services coordinated via the ASPEN system that will enable shore-based mission planning, produce an orchestration of activities that involve resources to be controlled. We will also use the CI will also provide services that encapsulate CASPER for continuous mission evaluation and replanning on remote assets, based on in input from the shore-side ASPEN mission plans that are provided whenever a shore connection is established. In addition, the CI will provide an adapter to MOOSDB, which provides a data exchange system with many available instrument adapter processes out of the box.  MOOS-IvP is one existing MOOS application for autonomous behavior control of autonomous assets with many available configurable behaviors. It can be controlled by setting state variables through MOOSDB, resulting from ASPEN/CASPER mission plans.  These CI assets will be tested during the CI OSSE effort.