NEMO-SN1 (Western Ionian Sea, off Eastern Sicily): Example of architecture of a cabled observatory

Abstract

NEMO-SN1, located in the central Mediterranean Sea, Western Ionian Sea, off Eastern Sicily Island (Southern Italy) at 2100 m water depth, 25 km from the harbour of the city of Catania, is a prototype of a cabled deep-sea multiparameter observatory and the first operating with real-time data transmission in Europe since 2005. NEMO-SN1 is also the first-established node of EMSO (European Multidisciplinary Seafloor Observatory, http://emso-eu.org), one of the incoming European large-scale research infrastructure included since 2006 in the Roadmap of the ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures, http://cordis.europa.eu/esfri/roadmap.htm), which will specifically address long-term monitoring of environmental processes related to Marine Ecosystems, Climate Change and Geo-hazards. NEMO-SN1 has been deployed and developed over the last decade thanks to Italian resources and to the EC project ESONET-NoE (European Seas Observatory NETwork Network of Excellence, 20072011) that funded the LIDO-DM (Listening to the Deep Ocean Demonstration Mission) and a technological interoperability test (http://www.esonet-emso.org/ esonet-noe/). NEMO-SN1 is performing geophysical and environmental long-term monitoring by acquiring seismological, geomagnetic, gravimetric, accelerometric, physico-oceanographic, hydro-acoustic, bio-acoustic measurements specifically related to earthquakes and tsunamis generation and ambient noise characterisation in term of marine mammal sounds, environmental and anthropogenic sources. A further main feature of NEMO-SN1 is to be an important test-site for the construction of KM3NeT (Kilometre-Cube Underwater Neutrino Telescope, http://www.km3net.org/), another large-scale research infrastructure included in the ESFRI Roadmap constituted by a large volume neutrino telescope. The description of the observatory and the most recent data acquired will be presented and framed in the general objectives of EMSO. © 2011 IEEE

InSEA Project: Initiatives in Supporting the Consolidation and Enhancement of the EMSO Infrastructure and Related Activities

“…Beranzoli et al, 2000;Favali et al, 2002;De Santis et al, 2006;Gasparoni et al, 2015) and ORION -Ocean Research by Integrated Observatory Networks-(e.g. Beranzoli et al, 2009;Favali et al, 2011) European Projects and the national project MABEL (e.g. Calcara et al, 2001).…”

“…Important results have been obtained during the developments of these mentioned projects, such as the monitoring and study of the Marsili seamount (e.g. Favali et al, 2011;Italiano et al, 2014;Giovanetti et al, 2016), understanding the geolectrical conductivity under some exploring sites of Southern Tyrrhenian Sea (Di Vitale et al, 2009), designing an original tsunami early warning system (Chierici et al, 2012), showing the importance of a multiparameteric geophysical, environmental and oceanographic monitoring (e.g. Monna et al, 2014), to mention just some of the found results.…”

“…These systems are capable of producing data in real time, being wired through electro-optical cables able to feed and receive data on the ground, via optical fibers and, at the same time, command the submarine systems (e.g. Favali et al, 2011). These programs involve many countries: United States of America (OOI-Ocean Observatories Initiative; http:// oceanobservatories.org), Canada (ONC-Ocean Networks Canada; http://oceannetworks.ca), Japan (DONET-Dense Oceanfloor Network System for Earthquakes and Tsunamis; http://jamstec.go.jp/donet), China (ECSSOS-East China Sea Seafloor Observation System), Australia (IMOS-Integrated Marine Observation System; http://imos.org.au), Taiwan (MACHO-Marine Cable Hosted Observatory; http://scweb.…”