Developing low-cost marine observation systems: Challenges for the Great Lakes and potential blue economic opportunities
Abstract
The Great Lakes freshwater environment presents winter season marine surface observation challenges, which typically result in removal of nearly all on-water observation systems during winter months. Over the past 40 years, 99% of all archived NDBC on-water observations from Lake Superior were obtained over an 8-month period spanning early April to late November. During this observation void, more frequent large storms are impacting coastal communities across the Great Lakes, illustrating their strength and unpredictability with intense winds and awe-inspiring waves reminiscent of ocean environments. At the University of Minnesota Duluth, ongoing development of a low-cost, open-source buoy for moored or Lagrangian measurements across the Great Lakes could enable accessible and expanded observation systems, in particular, during late season storms when most observation systems have been recovered.
This talk will explore ongoing low-cost buoy developments and other coastal observation initiatives, aiming to enable new insights into large freshwater system air-sea interactions, contaminant transport, extreme waves, and other drifting observations. As part of this development, we also explore the feasibility of installing LoRaWAN infrastructure along the Minnesota Lake Superior coast (North Shore) and inland waters for real-time sensing applications. This low-power and relatively low-cost IoT infrastructure enables distributing sensing across urban and rural communities, ecosystems and agriculture, industry and healthcare, and more. Discussion will focus around buoy development, applications for a growing Smart Great Lakes Initiative, and how the Great Lakes environment is suitable for developing marine energy technologies for both regional and global blue industrial opportunities.
Dr. Craig Hill is an Assistant Professor in the University of Minnesota (UMN) Duluth Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, and affiliated with the UMN Institute on the Environment and Large Lakes Observatory. He received a BA in Geology from the University of St. Thomas and his MS and PhD in Civil Engineering at the UMN Twin Cities campus. Following graduate school, he spent time as a Postdoc at the University of Washington in Seattle working on R&D in marine renewable energy, as well as a 2-year break from academia working as a product development and composites engineer in the sporting goods industry. Dr. Hill’s research interests span the intersection between marine environments and engineered systems. His group focuses on identifying new technologies to aid in society’s transition towards sustainable
energy, smart environments, and resilient coastal communities. This includes exploring new real-time observation platforms for marine monitoring, fluid-structure interactions of marine and wind energy technologies, wave climate and coastal impacts in the Great Lakes, and opportunities for marine energy technologies to power blue industries. Dr. Hill is particularly interested in connecting students and the community with the Great Lakes environment, sustainable energy systems, and Duluth’s unique maritime industry on Lake Superior.