Advancing Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Capability for Assessment of Marine Pollution

海洋污染是一个全球性的环境问题，具有严重的不利环境和社会经济影响。石油泄漏是污染的一种形式；进一步的化学物质流失和海洋中的塑料是其他问题。气候变化和生态系统的严重退化是这种污染的一些后果。风险增加，墨西哥湾深水地平线井喷，毛里求斯MV Wakashio， 2018年和2019年在纽芬兰泄漏，扩大了石油泄漏对策的潜在需求与当前响应能力之间的差距。关于水柱中的石油和其他污染的信息对于了解地下羽流的行为至关重要，从而能够及时有效地减轻污染。在墨西哥湾发生井喷事故后，自主水下航行器（AUV） Sentry成功地用于表征被困在约1200米深处的水下石油，并提供了对受影响区域的全面分析。在这项研究中，AUV的能力将专门用于理解海洋污染和响应：首先，将研究一种创新的自适应任务规划方法，用于研究由不溶性油滴云或其他潜在感兴趣的物品（如微塑料）组成的不连续斑块羽流，以提高AUV及其机载传感器在描绘地下羽流方面的性能。水下航行器采用自适应采样技术，根据机载传感器探测到的羽流特征，实时自主修改任务路径。因此，AUV路径集中在感兴趣的区域和传感器识别的信息丰富的区域，优化AUV响应。其次，将与加拿大AUV制造商合作研究远程AUV能力，以完成广泛的高耐力海洋污染监测任务，目的是实施监督和警报，从而采取缓解措施。可再生能源电池在水面充电，再加上自主导航和避碰系统，类似于为自主航运开发的系统，将被纳入其中，使这些新设计的auv能够在海洋表面环境中长期安全运行。第三，对监测海洋污染所需的远程远程作业进行基于风险的分析，并开发新的方法，以确保部署AUV对其他海洋用户（如人员、船舶和船只）以及通过水下噪声和潜在污染对环境的风险降到最低。随着越来越多的自动驾驶汽车出现在海面上，这是一个必不可少的组成部分。本研究的目标群体包括监管机构、海洋污染机构、溢油响应组织、海上石油工业、AUV制造商、运营商和海洋学家。

Marine pollution is a global environmental problem that has severe adverse environmental and socio-economic impacts. Oil spills are one form of pollution; further chemical run-off and plastics in the ocean are others. Climate change and severe degradation of our ecosystem are some of the outcomes from this pollution. Increased risks, the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the MV Wakashio in Mauritius, spills off Newfoundland in 2018 and 2019, have broadened the gap between the potential need for oil spill countermeasures and current response capabilities. Information about oil and other pollution in the water column is critical to understanding of subsurface plume behavior which in turn enables timely and effective mitigation. Following the Gulf of Mexico blowout, the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Sentry was successfully used to characterize submerged oil that was trapped at a depth of approximately 1200 m and provided a comprehensive analysis of the impacted areas. In this research AUV capabilities will be advanced specifically for the understanding of marine pollution and response: Firstly, an innovative adaptive mission planning approach for discontinuous patchy plumes made up of non-soluble oil droplet clouds or other potential items of interest such as micro-plastics, will be researched to improve performance of AUVs and their onboard sensors in delineating subsurface plumes. Using adaptive sampling, the AUV autonomously modifies its mission path in real-time based on features of the plumes detected by on-board sensors. Hence the AUV path is concentrated within the areas of interest and in information-rich areas identified by the sensors, optimizing the AUV response. Secondly, long-range AUV capability will be researched in conjunction with Canadian AUV manufacturers to enable extensive high-endurance marine pollution monitoring tasks to be completed with the aim to put in place watchdog and alerts that lead to mitigation measures. Renewable-energy battery charging at the water surface coupled with autonomous navigation and collision avoidance systems, similarly to those being developed for autonomous shipping, will be incorporated to enable these new designs of AUVs to operate safely over long periods in the ocean surface environment.  Thirdly, risk-based analysis of these remote long range operations required for the monitoring of marine pollution will be researched and new methods will be developed to ensure that the risks of AUV deployment to other ocean users, such as people, ships and boats, as well as to the environment through underwater noise and the potential for pollution, are minimized. This is an essential component as an increasing number of autonomous vehicles populates the ocean surface.  The target community of this research includes regulators, marine pollution agencies, oil spill response organizations, the offshore petroleum industry, AUV manufacturers, operators and oceanographers.