Vital Electronics, the key to the developing dynamic GIS for the Baltic or other maritime environments

Dynamic GIS can provide geospatial information in real-time in support of first responses to natural disasters (e.g. flooding on the Baltic ecosystem), man-made disasters (e.g. oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico), and for Search and Rescue (SAR) missions. All these scenarios require the integration between the real time data acquisition and dynamic GIS. The proposed Vital Electronic System for Maritime Applications (SYSTEM) integrates: a land or sea-based Data Center; a "Mother Ship" (used for sensor deployment and local data collection); and a large number of easily deployed, disposable, intercommunicating, and intelligent "Floaters" (equipped with task-specific sensors). An embedded Vital Electronics Computer composed of a hierarchical network of a large number of wireless PSoC-based GNODEs (configurable at deployment), forms the core of SYSTEM. The Floaters include both task-specific Sensing-only GNODEs and Aggregation GNODEs dedicated to local data aggregation and global communications tasks. Sensing GNODE may be equipped with submerged sensors (e.g. water temperature, pressure, salinity, acidity, passive acoustic, SONAR), and/or above water sensors (e.g. air temperature, proximity, sound, light, thermal IR, passive RF, RADAR). Aggregation GNODEs provide absolute location (e.g. GPS or other means) and also long-range communications with the "Mother Ship", a satellite or airborne platform, and/or a land-based data center. Ultimately, the data collected by the system can be integrated with reference GIS data (such as existing terrain and sea-bottom maps, as well as other live information. The composite data should be web-accessible with the appropriate level of security to relevant agencies and other authorized users. Currently, breadboard proto-prototype Floater electronics is under development.