Accelerating innovation in autonomous ocean sensing

The ocean is changing rapidly, but many of the processes driving this are taking place far below the surface, across vast and often inaccessible areas. Understanding rapid change requires observations that are more frequent, more detailed and collected across a much wider range of environments than traditional research approaches can often provide.

Accelerating Adoption of Sensor Innovation (AASI) 

The AASI programme is addressing this challenge by making advanced sensing technologies easier to deploy at scale, enabling autonomous platforms to collect the detailed, sustained observations needed to understand a rapidly changing ocean.

The programme is accelerating the development and adoption of new marine sensors, while enabling them to be integrated with autonomous vehicles that can collect observations over longer periods and in challenging environments.

This is helping to move promising sensing technologies more quickly from development into scientific use. Autonomous platforms can carry these next-generation sensors into parts of the ocean that are difficult, costly or time-consuming to reach, opening up new opportunities to monitor nutrients, carbon and ocean chemistry at greater scale.

By making it possible to observe more of the ocean, more often and in greater detail, AASI is helping turn technological innovation into new scientific knowledge, while creating the evidence needed to understand environmental change, support better decisions and respond to challenges facing society.

To understand how our oceans are changing, we need better ways to observe them. AASI has helped us develop new sensors and deploy them on autonomous vehicles so we can collect data from places that were previously difficult to study. That gives us a much clearer picture of what's happening beneath the surface. We're also making it easier to store, share and use that information, so researchers can turn data into evidence that supports better decisions about our oceans. Together, these advances are helping us understand how marine environments are changing and giving us the knowledge we need to protect them for the future.

Justin Buck, National Oceanography Centre

Accelerating sensor innovation

Moving new marine sensing technologies from development into practical scientific use, accelerating innovation and giving researchers access to smarter tools for autonomous ocean research.

Deploying new technologies faster

Integrating next-generation sensors with autonomous systems to move promising technologies from the lab into real-world ocean research, extending where and how scientists can observe the ocean.

Monitoring ocean chemistry at scale

Enabling autonomous measurements of nutrients, carbon and ocean chemistry in hard-to-reach environments, generating new knowledge about marine ecosystems and the ocean's role in the climate system.

Unlocking the value of ocean data

Strengthening digital infrastructure to connect, share and use increasingly complex ocean datasets, helping turn observations into evidence for research, environmental management and policy.

Advancing understanding of climate and ocean health

Providing new evidence on how the ocean is changing, supporting climate research and environmental monitoring while helping society better understand and respond to changes affecting marine ecosystems and resources.

By combining faster sensor innovation, wider autonomous observation and stronger digital infrastructure, AASI is helping transform how we understand a changing ocean. It is building the capability to generate better evidence at greater scale - accelerating scientific discovery, strengthening the technologies and skills needed for future innovation, and supporting the knowledge required to protect marine environments and inform decisions that affect society.