What does OOI stand for?

The defense contractor said it will design, build and install the regional scale nodes as part of the National Science Foundation's Ocean Observatories Initiative.

The National Science Foundation announced the UW grant Wednesday as part of $385 million to the Ocean Observatories Initiative, based in Washington, D.

The grant helps launch the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), a $300 million project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to build, implement, and operate coordinated systems of moored buoys, undersea cabled networks, and autonomous underwater vehicles--all instrumented to collect data on the inner workings of ocean currents, ocean ecosystems, seafloor processes, and air-sea interactions that influence weather and climate.

Oversaw the initial funding and development of what promises to be a revolutionary new approach to ocean sensing known as the Ocean Observatories Initiative (also known as the Ocean Research Interactive Observatory Networks or ORION)--a critical research element of the Integrated Ocean Observation System.

The Ocean Observatories Initiative led by the National Science Foundation includes an array of deep-ocean buoys that serve a variety of research endeavors--including bottom pressure gauges and seafloor seismometers--with instruments strung from the sea surface to the ocean floor.