South Florida Ocean Measurement Center (SFOMC) "a coastal ocean observatory"

The South Florida Ocean Measurement Center (SFOMC) is a coastal ocean observatory combining government, commercial, and academic resources, intellectual talents, and modern facilities to create a new global-interest center where high fidelity and cost effective experiments and studies can be conducted. The combined SFOMC in-water and shore facilities located in southern Florida provide a fully integrated observatory to archive measurements, provide ground truth to validate hydrographic survey systems, intercompare in situ data with emerging oceanographic instruments, and to disseminate environmental information supporting maritime operations. Specific accomplishments at SFOMC include installation of innovative environmental arrays and data analyses, a 4-dimensional current experiment, AUV operations and mine hunting experiments, adverse weather experiments, studies of fluctuations, coherence, and predictability of long range shallow water acoustic propagation, bio/geological inventories and assessments, and rehearsals for Fleet Battle Experiments. The implementation of SFOMC as a Government-University laboratory to observe littoral processes has been successful. SFOMC is being sustained through ongoing operations and experiments with established sponsorship from ONR, NSF, NOPP, NAVSEA, and DARPA as well as state and local government.