The cost, endurance, reliability, and accuracy advantages of having a “dry” radar based wave measurement tool are significant. “Wet” assets such as buoys suffer from numerous disadvantages that are not easy to overcome.
Disadvantages of Buoys
- Inexpensive wave buoys that measure wave height and direction can be purchased for as little as $60,000 [1]. However, a wave buoy that can offer similar wave and metocean data provided by FutureWaves can cost as much as $450,000 [2]
- Additional costs to deploy and maintain
- Deployment – $30,000 [1]
- Maintenance – $170,000 per year [3]
- Repair – $25,000 [4]
- The ocean environment can be cruel, and buoys are not spared from mother nature’s impacts
- Biofouling is the build up of sea-life on wet assets that negatively affects the efficiency of the asset. Buoys can experience this quickly (within 2-3 weeks [5]) and suffer from reduced accuracy or even be rendered completely inoperable
- Moorings/anchors can give way to extreme conditions or poor seafloor conditions, sending buoys adrift
- Aside from nature’s impact, several human factors come into play:
- Sensitive transducers can easily be damaged by boat traffic
- Buoys often fall victim to vandalism and theft [6]
- Fishermen often anchor off buoys to catch the fish attracted to them
- Buoys have been found caught in fishing equipment such as nets
- Buoy data is only relevant to operations conducted within their immediate vicinity
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- Buoys cannot provide wave timing and cannot sync with vessel data (course, speed, motion, etc.)
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- In some cases, buoys can produce erroneous directional information. Because buoys measure the wave field at one physical location, they do not have enough information to accurately measure wave direction and spreading under many circumstances. NOAA’s National Data Buoy Center Technical Document [7] states that a commonly directional estimation technique “may provide erroneous directional information”, and states that that same technique “may produce artificially narrow directional spreading functions … and artificial double-peaks”. FutureWaves is free from such limitations and assumptions through the use of a radar which measures the wavefield over a large area and the use of a specially-developed directional spectrum estimation algorithm. These advantages enable FutureWaves to set a new standard for sea state information.
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[1] http://sccoos.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/terrill_thomas_0686-2016_sccoos_wave_buoy_supplement_proposal.pdf
[2] https://matteroftrust.org/14628/wave-sensor-buoy-deployed-in-cape-cod-bay
[3] https://www.miros-group.com/blog/wave-buoys-pitfalls-price-tags-and-piracy-on-the-high-seas/
[4] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/423280/the-reliability-of-tsunami-detection-buoys/
[5] Yebra, Diego Meseguer; Kiil, Soren; Dam-Johansen, Kim (July 2004), “Antifouling technology–past, present and future steps towards efficient and environmentally friendly antifouling coatings”, Progress in Organic Coatings, 50 (2): 75–104, doi:10.1016/j.porgcoat.2003.06.001, ISSN 0300-9440
[6] Teng, Chung-Chu & Cucullu, S & McArthur, S & Kohler, C & Burnett, B & Bernard, Landry. (2009). Buoy vandalism experienced by NOAA National Data Buoy Center. 1 – 8.
[7] http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/wavemeas.pdf
Boat fouling organisms
Photograph by Doug Beckers
Photograph by Doug Beckers
Retrieval of zebra mussel-encrusted Vector Averaging Current Meter near Michigan City, IN. Lake Michigan, June 1999. Photo by NOAA, Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory
Buoy set adrift