An Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) is being conducted to test the capabilities of the National Science Foundation Ocean Observatory Initiative (OOI) CyberInfrastructure (CI) distributed ocean observing networks in the Mid-Atlantic Bight. The 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. The NOAA MarCOOS, DoD ESPRESSO, and DHS Mid-Atlantic assets will be utilized 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.

The MIT Laboratory for Autonomous Marine Sensing Systems (LAMSS) and Multidiscplinary Simulation, Estimation, and Assimilation Systems (MSEAS) groups will support the OSSE through the integration of MOOSDB and MOOS-IvP components, behaviors and autonomous platform systems with ocean modeling and forecasting, data assimilation and uncertainty estimation, and adaptive sampling. The MIT-MSEAS group and UMASS-Dartmouth group work together on the ocean modeling component of the OSSE. They utilize the MSEAS system, with its new free-surface and two-way nested primitive-equation code (an upgraded version of the Harvard primitive-equation), forced by new barotropic tidal current estimates. The integrated OSSE prototype has been developed in a simulator environment which allows for the testing of glider and AUV parameters in the MSEAS simulated ocean conditions. Selected configurable MOOS-IvP behaviors will be provided suitable for adaptive observations in OSSE scenarios utilizing available real-time numerical model output and CASPER execution. The MSEAS web site for the OOI program can be found here.

For a more complete description of the OSSE experiment, see this Rutgers site or this OOI site.