soapbox

Sea Technology, Mar 2008 by Andrade, Stephen

The Wired Ocean: A New Paradigm for Business and Collaboration - Stephen Andrade

As member of Battelle's Technology Partnership Practice, Stephen Andrade's recent projects include a Massachusetts coastal ocean observation collaborative, strengthening a southeastern New England marine industry association and engineering talent and innovation programs in Connecticut. He holds degrees from Harvard and Syracuse universities.

Just as the Internet and the computer revolutions have restructured how this article has been created, published and delivered, so also will many marinerelated products and services be changed due to the wiring of the oceans. As Jeffrey Kinder said in this column in January, "The sun has risen on a new era where ocean conditions in many places on the planet are at our fingertips." However, the full economic and societal implications of this new capability have yet to develop.

With change comes both opportunity and risk, and nowhere is this change more compelling than in the context of global climate change, which has become the overarching issue in ocean-related research. The full implications of this change remain unknown, and we have yet to fully develop the mechanisms and institutions to effectively manage the consequences of human activity.

For those in businesses that rely on ocean and marine resources, there are several questions. How will market forces and systems be applied to contribute to solutions that reduce our carbon footprint on this planet? How will such measures be valued? And how will we know which ones are working and how well? Translation: What will my business look like in five to 10 years?

As the nexus between oceanographie research and naval submarine defense has shifted; as the Cold War has been supplanted by the Global War on Terrorism; as old military enemies who once posed a threat have become customers, economic competitors and potential collaborators in a global economy; and as traditional product and component businesses strive to find their next engine for growth, new models and markets for business and collaboration are emerging.

As we shift to a 24/7 wired infrastructure for ocean observation, prediction and management, additional factors will impact where and by whom new ocean-related technologies are commercialized to solve market problems. Among these factors are the growing number of ocean and marine research institutions, new sources of research funding and a growth in National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration funding coupled with a long-term decline in U.S. Navy and Office of Naval Research funding.

With increasing competition and the shift of federal funding, leading oceanographic institutions are seeking to diversify their funding base and broaden applied research and development with industry support.

In New England, the most recent round of defense installation closings, known Base Realignment and Closure, threatened to shutter or reduce key Navy installations-from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Groton, Connecticut-further heightening public awareness of the importance of these types of facilities to regional economies. To sustain these assets, the need to diversify is even more apparent.

Coastal states, including California, Florida and Massachusetts, are now acting on the need to capture and leverage the new wave of federal ocean observation infrastructure investments to address environmental, government and economic development needs. A recent example of this occurred in August, when the Joint Océanographie Institutions announced on behalf of NSF an award of $97.7 million to Woods Hole Océanographie Institution. This award was coupled with an unprecedented $10 million co-investment by Massachusetts through the John Adams Innovation Institute as part of the Ocean Observing Initiative (OOI).

No single organization will be successful on its own. In the current "open innovation" landscape, both larger original equipment manufaturers and prime defense contactors and smaller technology firms as well as universities and research institutions need to collaborate to bring new, innovative solutions to the market.

Given the opportunity to develop integrated solutions, decision support tools and information products, there is also a need to include firms with capabilities complementary to those traditionally found in marine-related networks that are more often engaged in hardware and components.

In the port and homeland security market are examples of where this newer mix of players are collaborating and achieving success through a team-based approach. One is in the Port of Houston, perhaps the most advanced port security project in the United States. The other is Rhode Island's Project Undersea Perimeter Security Integrated Defense Environment, or UPSIDE, which has focused on the protection of defense assets using Narragansett Bay as a test bed for equipment and services for threat identification to threat removal in an integrated manner.