The primary objective of the proposed endeavor is to build a community-driven marine coastal data harvesting ecosystem that not only provides a benefit to the individuals within the coastal community,…

This $149,872 Project Grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program (CFDA 11.021), aims to develop a community-driven marine coastal data ecosystem. Cell Matrix Corporation will create a participatory sensor network and scalable cloud service to support geospatial object and database queries. A mobile app will motivate mariners to interact and provide timely geospatial feature updates. The viability of an ultra-low-cost marine image sensor unit for identifying and classifying objects will also be investigated. Virginia Tech will study the viability of creating such marine image sensors under a $24,872 sub-award. This award leverages volunteered geographic information to enhance maritime safety and navigation databases through automated analytics on expanded, higher quality datasets.

The primary objective of the proposed endeavor is to build a community-driven marine coastal data harvesting ecosystem that not only provides a benefit to the individuals within the coastal community, but also enhances the data quality, completeness and timeliness of maritime safety and navigation databases. The approach leverages volunteered geographic information to motivate dataset generation for automated analytics. The investigators propose the creation of a participatory sensor network for augmenting conventional marine navigation with timely updates of geospatial features. Aspects investigated include (a) a scalable cloud service that supports geographic objects and geospatial and temporal database query operations, (b) a motivating mobile client APP for mariners that promotes interaction, (c) the viability of creating an ultra low cost marine-grade image sensor unit for identifying and coarsely classifying objects, (d) the social and economic forces and attractors in this marke