Development of an autonomous catamaran based observatory system for collecting meteorological and oceanographic parameters at Gulf of Khambhat-Gujarat

An instrumented, self-orienting catamaran based observatory system has been developed successfully by National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) to measure the physical properties above and below sea surface^[1]. The autonomous observatory has the capabilities of measuring currents of depth up to 40m. The above development work has been undertaken to meet the requirement of establishing met-ocean observatory system in different locations in Gulf of Khambhat (GoK), in Gujarat state for the construction of dam in the Gulf of Khambhat under Kalpasar project. The prime objective of the establishment of network of observatories is to collect time series measurements of met-ocean data sets which are necessary for the understanding, conceptual design and modeling. The observatory systems are categorized in to three types depending on sensor configuration on each type. This paper describes on the developmental work carried out for the establishment of catamaran based observatory system which is suitable for high current ^[2]. This development work has been successful with the CPU interfaced to the required set of sensors on the catamaran based observatory platform.