Route Survey Periodicity for Mine Warfare
Abstract
One of the Navy's most long standing challenges has been conquering the mine warfare threat. As mines and mine warfare techniques evolve and become more sophisticated, so does the United States' ability to counter the threat. The United States newest technique for countering a potential mined harbor, or route, is a process known as "change detection." This concept uses previous side scan sonar images of the area prior to a mining event and compares those images to a recent scan post the mining event. This allows trained technicians to identify and classify previously recognized Non-Mine, Mine-Like Bottom Objects (NOMBOs) from new shapes present on the seafloor. The object of this classification is to reduce the number of hours searching and clearing previously existing objects that are thought to be mines. If the object or shape was present before the mining event, then it can be neglected from further inspection. The challenge is having a sufficiently current scan of the area "on the shelf." The environmental bottom conditions of certain locations change dramatically more often than others. It is necessary to update more frequently scans of bottom regions that present large change rates than of areas that have smaller change rates. This thesis will present a logical effort, based on known bottom conditions, to aid in determining the rate, or periodicity, at which certain regions should be surveyed in order to have a quality scan standing by. The Resurvey Integration Model (RIM) will provide a user friendly method to efficiently and effectively predict a reasonable periodicity interval of an area to support the Navy's Mine Warfare and Meteorology and Oceanography communities. Use of this model will stand to reduce unnecessary expenditure of assets, resources and time on areas that do not require as frequent of surveys. These up to date scans will in turn aid in expediting the clearing of routes, ports and harbors after a mining event.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2009
- Accession Number
- ADA508959
Entities
People
- V Coke F. Hartwell
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School