Lead Applicant: Dr Florian Le Pape, Host: Dublin Institue for Advanced Studies

Project Title: Towards real time remote sensing of Galway Bay's ocean noise

Project Description: Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) has shown potential for offshore dense acoustic and seismic data acquisition. The main goals of the project are (i) use DAS data recorded in Galway Bay to characterize and track key natural and antrhopogenic acoustic/seismic events in the bay, covering various timescales in ocean noise fluctuations, from ocean waves to ships traffic; (ii)develop processing workflows and strategies for long-term handling of the hude data that is DAS, with the perspective of real-time monitoring of the marine environment and time-lapse changes to the sea bed​​​​​​.​

Lead Applicant: Dr Aaron Lim, Host: University College Cork

Project Title: An Enhanced Angular Range Analysis workflow with backscatter and magnetometry

Project Description: ​This project aims to create an objective and standardised sediment classification workflow that may be upscaled to large governmental programs. It will apply an enhanced angular range analysis to 6 broad areas of INFOMAR data: deep (+700 m); intermediate (400 m); shallow (200 m) and areas of interest to ORE development ranging from 100 to 20 m. The backscatter grids generated will be segmented and classified based on ARA-derived sediment composition. Magnetometry data will be diurnally corrected and depth-normalised such that total and residual values can be embedded within the classification. Accuracy will be calculated using previously acquired sediment samples and a new workflow document created for the derivation of these data layers that can be adopted by governmental programs and increase industrial uptake of governmental data.​