Recent development in the Naval Oceanographic Office survey operation center

The Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) operates a fleet of seven multidisciplinary survey ships deployed throughout the world dedicated to collecting hydrographic and oceanographic data. Leveraging commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) communication, network, enterprise management, and system integration technologies, NAVOCEANO developed a Survey Operations Center (SOC) focused on the continuous improvement of survey quality and reduction of the time required to deliver product to clients. The COTS components include rsync as a file replication system, IBM MQ Series as a real-time message bus, and Computer Associates Unicenter as an enterprise management system. In addition, Perl is used as an integration language, and various web/visualization and database technologies are incorporated into the design. The SOC infrastructure was initially developed to support both continuous asymmetrical high bandwidth (2.048-Mbit ship to shore/384-Kbit shore to ship) and was subsequently adapted to support dial-up symmetrical low bandwidth (64-Kbit) communication links. This paper reviews the technical aspects of the SOC infrastructure to be implemented into the operational environment in 2003 and beyond. It concentrates on the COTS technologies that were assembled into a unified system, how the system was connected to the existing ship data acquisition systems, and information transport mechanisms. It also covers changes in the bandwidth requirements, implementation schedule, as well as the use of enterprise management, network management tools, and web and other technologies to make the information available to the scientists throughout NAVOCEANO.