OGS
Trieste, 34010 Sgonico, Italy

STORAGE

DeepLab (IT1.8)

DeepLab Sea Floor Landers for meteooceanographic physical and geochemical data collection

OGS has developed and used for marine field researches a series of support vehicles to collect meteo-oceanographic physical and chemical data. Floating buoys have demonstrated to be efficient and flexible, but generally too costly to be maintained at the sea for long periods. More recently, OGS has preferred a new family of DeepLab Sea Floor Landers, with a stainless steel structure that allows placing scientific instruments at the sea floor. These stations are equipped with an underwater telemetry system with 5 miles range able to control the releasing of a subsurface buoy for the recovery of the lander. This has to be done at due intervals, to change batteries, verify and eventually re-calibrate the marine instruments and download the recorded data.   

Areas of research

In the current configuration, the DeepLabs are equipped with base instruments to measure temperature, conductivity, pressure, dissolved oxygen, pH, dissolved CO2, sea currents on the water column every 0.5 m and estimate waves height and direction. The Deep Lab can be used to determine the natural temporal variations of various parameters as part of pre-injection baseline surveys or as a continuous monitoring station to detect leaks at offshore storage sites.

State of the Art, uniqueness & specific advantages

The more recent version of the DeepLab Sea Floor Lander has been used successfully to define the CO2 base-line survey of the Porto Tolle demonstration project in Northern Adriatic and can be a useful instrumented vehicle for scientific studies at Natural laboratory of Panarea.

The shape, size and weight/thrust of the DeepLabs make them particularly robust and suitable for long-term time-series measures, minimizing damages and data loss caused, for example, by fishing activities. The modular design of power supply system and data logger, allows an easy integration with additional instruments provided by new users.

Using acoustic commands sent from a deck unit and a transducer on board, a releaser-transponder fixed to the station permits to locate it by calculating the distance from the ship, and to release a buoy for its recover without the need of divers.

Scientific Environment

The stations record time series of physical-oceanographic and chemical parameters of the bottom water and of the water column by using self recording instruments.

Support in the use of the Deeplab Sea Floor Landers will consist in: planning surveys, acquisition of the due permissions for the deployment of the Deeplab in the areas of interests, installation of additional equipment if required, positioning at the sea, maintenance and recovery of data by suitable support boats (if needed), processing of the data, their upload to internet for a long-distance access, the access to Calibration facility at OGS Oceanographic calibration laboratory (CTMO).

Deeplab system was developed in OGS using know-how on deployment methods and processing procedure to obtain Oceanographic data time series developed and continuously updated by engineers, researchers and technicians of OGS in the last 30 years.

Operating by

OGS

Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale
Italy
STORAGE technologies:
Monitoring, Leakage
Research Fields:
Chemistry/Geochemistry, Ecosystem, Monitoring, Modelling
Facility's fact sheet

Location & Contacts

Location
Trieste, 34010 Sgonico, Italy
Contacts
Davide Deponte
RICC Contacts - Secondary contact
Cinzia De Vittor

Facility Availability

Day
Unit of access (UA)
Day
Availability per year (in UA)
Minimum 5 days
Duration of a typical access (average) and number of external users expected for that access
5 Days
Average number of external users expected for typical access
1 or 2 external users maximum expected

Quality Control / Quality Assurance (QA)

Activities / tests / data are
Controlled: All sensors installed on the Deeplab are periodically calibrated and controlled at the OGS CTMO facility.
Institution QA Webpages

Operational or other constraints

Specific risks:
Under bad weather conditions DeepLab can’t be operated
Legal issues
n/a

CCUS Projects

EU-Funded CCUS Projects
EC DG RESEARCH - FP6 & 7
RISCS - Research into Impacts and Safety in CO2 Storage
FP6
CO2GeoNet
FP7
ECO2 -Sub-seabed CO2 Storage: Impact on Marine Ecosystems
Other CCUS Projects
OTHER LARGE INITIATIVES
EUROFLEETS

Selected Publications

Volume 27, Issue 3, Pages 195-205 (2015)
Mantle degassing on a near shore volcano, SE Tyrrhenian Sea
Loreto, M.F., Italiano, F., Deponte, D.d, Facchin, L.d, Zgur, F.d
Environ Sci Technol 48(20):12126-33 (2014)
Spatial and Temporal pCO2 Marine Monitoring Near Panarea Island (Italy) Using Multiple Low-Cost GasPro Sensors.
Graziani S., Beaubien S.E., Bigi S., Lombardi S.
Fourth EAGE CO2 Geological Storage Workshop, Demonstrating storage integrity and building confidence in CCS, 23 - 25 April 2014, Stavanger, Norway: 19675 (2014)
Use of the Panarea Natural Test Laboratory for Offshore CO2 Leakage Monitoring and Impact Studies
Beaubien S.E., De Vittor C., Viezzoli D., Annunziatellis A., Bigi S., Celussi M., Colella S., Comici C., Graziani S., Karuza A., Kralj M., Lombardi S., Pacciaroni M.
Continental Shelf Research, Volume 44, Pages 5-19. (2012)
Low-frequency flow in the bottom layer of the Strait of Otranto
Ursella, L., Gačić, M., Kovačević, V., Deponte, D.
Open geospatial data, softw. stand. 2, 22 (2017)
From heterogeneous marine sensors to sensor web: (near) real-time open data access adopting OGC sensor web enablement standards.
Partescano E., Brosich A., Giorgetti A., Lipizer M, Cardin V. 2017