Development of an NDBC Standard Buoy

In the last five years the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) has assumed operational responsibility for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration´s (NOAA´s) Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami (DART®) network and the Tropical Atmospheric Ocean (TAO) network. This created an NDBC observing system consisting of approximately 195 buoy platforms, over a 250 percent increase from the 2002 fleet of 76 buoy platforms. Despite, in many instances, performing similar missions, these platforms had several different hull and electronic configurations. This, coupled with a dramatic decrease in availability of support assets, has created the potential for operational and logistical bottlenecks. NDBC has taken this opportunity to analyze and optimize the manner in which it conducts business in order to make its operations more cost-effective and increase the overall data availability of the network. One of the main products of this effort is the development of an NDBC Standard Buoy. This buoy has been designed to transcend the three main programs operated by NDBC, both individually and collectively, from the same platform. Additionally, this platform will be used as a form factor for the adoption of any additional programs in the future. This presentation will discuss the technical details of the standard buoy and the present status of the prototyping phase.