Rapid Environmental Assessment within NATO: Underwater Warfare Programs Fuse Civilian Technologies with Military Architectures to Deliver Oceanographic Products

Abstract : This paper examines rapid environmental assessment (REA) in the context of naval requirements and characteristics for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The time and space scales of REA are very application dependent, and "rapid" refers to the speed of responding to a request for information rather than an indication of time scales of variability within the survey domain. The paper examines civilian technologies such as internet, geographic information systems (GIS), and other communication capabilities that are used to facilitate REA. An example REA scenario is presented for the Gulf of Mexico in the Shelf Energy and Exchange Dynamics (SEED) domain using nested Navy Coastal Ocean Model (NCOM) domains. Recent advances in sensors and platforms provide new opportunities for multiple views of the battlespace with more information to improve future REAs.