4D (Space-Time) Ocean Acoustics and Soundscapes

Abstract

This project will lead to a website containing the Ocean Sound Atlas, which will allow a user to interactively explore both local an,d global soundscape maps in the ocean.The maps will be generated by ocean acoustic models with sound generated by many sources inclu,ding shipping, wind, pile driving, and seismic exploration. Just as lights illuminate a room, the sounds sources light up or more,precisely ensonify the ocean and the ocean acoustic models reveal the resulting soundscape.This website will provide a 4D (Space-Tim,e) view of the worlds ocean soundscape, so rather than just providing a static snapshot, the Atlas will allow users to go backwards, and forwards in time to see how the evolving oceanography affects the resulting soundscape. (In the oceanographic literature, the t,erms hindcast, nowcast, and forecast are used for such models of the past, present, and future.)This proposed research involves 4D (,Space-Time) acoustic modeling with a tight coupling between the evolving ocean structure and the soundscape the oceanographic model, provides the 4D soundspeed, which leads to an evolving soundscape. Meanwhile, the acoustic field is sampled by fixed and mobile rec,eivers. The resulting travel-time information in turn constrains the oceanographic model. Thus, we will produce a continuous feedbac,k between the two types of physical models.This is actually an enormously complex task each type of sound source leads to different, modeling needs and requires access to different databases. For instance, global shipping and winds are features that vary in time a,nd space. As mentioned above, we envision this website as being able to provide hindcasts, nowcasts, and forecasts of the soundscape,. Thus we will need to tap into similar data for the oceanography, shipping, and winds. Fortunately, a lot of this information is mo,re readily available today. For instance, we routinely tap into the HYCOM website for global oceanographic information. Global winds, are available on https://earth.nullschool.net. In the past, we used a static, statistical database of ships from 2009; now there i,s a commercial dataset of shipping from MarineTraffic.com.The resulting Ocean Sound Atlas serves two main purposes. It provides a to,ol for the public to understand the role of sound in the ocean environment. It also provides a testbed for advanced modeling tools o,f both the environment and the acoustics.

Document Details

Document Type
DoD Grant Award
Publication Date
Jan 14, 2022
Source ID
N000142212052

Entities

People

  • Michael Porter

Organizations

  • HLS Research (United States)
  • Office of Naval Research
  • United States Navy

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Modeling, Data Assimilation, and Flux Boundary Layers
  • Speech Processing/Speech Recognition.
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Space