ROV and SSS Reporting

Overview

Teaching: 30 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

• Why is it important to keep ROV/SSS records?

• How are ROV/SSS missions reported?

• How can we improve this workflow?

Objectives

Record Keeping for Robotics Missions

ROV camera and remote sensing data are important contributors to our understanding of biological presence or absence in difficult-to-sample parts of the ocean. It can also make important contributions to habitat mapping or species composition/interaction observations, even when this was not the intended aim of the deployment. This creates an obligation to our many partners as well as our funders to record and document all ROV missions thoroughly for future re-use of this valuable data. This will include proper archiving of all collected data, video footage and other samples along with complete metadata to give temporal and geographical context.

Operators are also responsible for the constant verification and re-evaluation of the workflow to ensure we continue to safely and productively meet these obligations while adhering to the latest in industry reporting standards.

Current OTN ROV Reporting Requirements

The previous set of instructions for ROV/SSS Reporting was available on the Field Ops GitLab.

This is a new data format for OTNDC! We want to work with the Robotics Team to figure out what works. We do know that we need to archive the data somewhere, and ensure we have a record of all missions completed. We can use this records to show our “effort” to our funders, and document any lost/damaged equipment which may need replacement.

Currently:

1. When a request for an ROV project is received and scoped, a project needs to be entered into the Mission Planning project in Asana. This information will be used by the Field Team Lead to work with the Robotics Team and Project Management to identify the requirements and any legal agreements required.
2. Once an ROV mission has been completed, the following information must be added by the Operator to this OneDrive folder. Direct uploading is necessary because the size of most of these files precludes them being emailed or posted on our Data Portal website.
   • Data files from any instruments
   • Video files from the instruments
   • Any video clips that have been deemed relevant/interesting, or notes describing any significant video sections (for the Communications team).
   • GPS trackfile of the flightpath (if available), or start/end coordinates for the mission
3. Once an ROV mission has been completed, the following information is emailed to OTNDC@Dal.ca or posted in the relevant Data Portal folder.
   • Mission report
   • Deployment metadata

Missions completed for other partners will get their own project created in the OTN database, while all other OTN-led projects will be added to an OTN-Robotics catch-all project.

Establishing Standards Based on Industry Practices

OTNDC’s questions for the Robotics Team include:

• What are the standard data files and formats that are currently collected by OTN ROV or SSS missions?
• What extra information is generally important for post-processing / data analysis of these files? Instrument programming, weather conditions, oceanographic information? We can add these to an ROV-specific Deployment metadata since the current template was developed for gliders.
• What do most professionals use to add geographic context to ROV/SSS missions? GPS trackfiles, start/end coordinates?
• Are there standard reporting templates in use by our partners that we can or should adopt?

We are excited to expand our robotics fleet and are keen and willing to change our expectations based on the experience of professionals. We currently do not have any tools built to process ROV-specific metadata (only gliders) making this an ideal time to identify standard formats.

Key Points

• Data files, along with metadata about the time and location, are needed for each mission

• We have a current workflow for reporting, but are open to adapt