The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) is a NSF Division of Ocean Sciences program that focuses the science, technology, education and outreach of an emerging network of science driven ocean observing systems. The core capabilities and the principal objectives of ocean observatories are collecting real-time data, analyzing data and modeling the ocean on multiple scales, and enabling adaptive experimentation within the ocean.

OOI CyberInfrastructure (CI) conducted an Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) to test the capabilities of the OOI CI to support field efforts in a distributed ocean observatory in the Mid-Atlantic Bight. The goal was 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 MAB region was selected because of the existing communities and the presence of NOAA, ONR coordinated by Oscar Schofield in the context of the MARCOOS effort. The experiment took place October-December 2009.

The MSEAS group and the MIT Laboratory for Autonomous Marine Sensing Systems (LAMSS) group supported 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 integrated OSSE prototype was developed in a simulator environment which allowed for the testing of glider and AUV parameters in the MSEAS simulated ocean conditions. Selected configurable MOOS-IvP behaviors were provided suitable for adaptive observations in OSSE scenarios utilizing available real-time numerical model output and CASPER execution.