Real-Time Visualization in the Offshore Industry

eal-time underwater visualization has been extremely slow to develop within the offshore industry and has generally been limited to 2D representations of vessel positions on digital charts. 1 Only recently have marine industries realized the potential of 3D real-time virtual environments (VEs) and visual-ization systems for effective management planning and real-time situation awareness. In this article, we describe a real-time visualization of the clean-up of a former US Naval Submarine Base, located in Holy Loch, Scotland. (See the sidebar " Offshore Diamond Mining " for another implementation .) Our Whole-Field Modeling System (WFM) has provided an accurate real-time visualization of numerous varying parameters such as remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), cranes, barges, grabs, magnets, and detailed seabed topography. The system improved the field staffs' spatial and temporal awareness and facilitated decision making within the complex offshore working environment. Holy Loch lies approximately 50 km due west of Glasgow and is 4 km long and 1 km wide. Britain and the US have used the loch for military purposes since World War I. In 1945, the US military returned to the loch to act as peace keepers for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance. The US Navy operated a submarine base in the loch for more than 30 years with more than 1,500 American servicemen stationed there. In 1992, the US closed the base, and the American military withdrew, leaving behind much military debris. Before the base can be returned to the Clyde Port Authority, the loch must be carefully cleared by the UK of all debris. We initially surveyed Holy Loch in 1996 using our sonar Seabed Visualization System (SVS). 4 The resulting high-resolution bathymetric data geographically highlighted the main debris areas, which were mostly located under the original floating docks. Figure 1 shows a depth-colored bathymetric plot from the sonar survey showing the seabed that lies directly under the original floating naval base. The original heavy anchor chains that secured the docks caused the scour marks in the loch floor. The US military originally found the deep circular hole in the image's center to be one of the deepest locations in the loch and consequently used it as the floating docks' main position. The clean-up team split the area for debris clearance in Holy Loch into several 25-m 2 blocks. They broke down each block into four 12.5-m 2 areas. These blocks consist of 9 × 9 individual lifting zones, …