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Baptism of the sea for the new Buoy of the Italian National Wave Network (RON)

Less than a month after the launch of the eighth buoy of the National Wave Network, a strong Bora (the Adriatic north east wind) storm hit the Upper Adriatic on 9 April, with sea growing to a peak with waves up to 2.5 m. The buoy belongs to the fleet of 9 oceanographic buoys supplied by Siap+Micros to ISPRA (Italian National Network for the Environmental Protection) for the direct acquisition of marine meteorological data and wave dynamics of the Italian seas. The exceptional storm was an ideal opportunity for the researchers of the joint experimentation project between ISPRA and CNR-ISMAR (Italian National Research Council – Marine Sciences Institute) who were able to record both the data coming from the instrumentation on board the buoy, and those produced by a sophisticated and advanced optical wave measurement system installed in the nearby CNR oceanographic platform “Acqua Alta”. This system, developed in collaboration with the University of Venice, has already been exported and tested in various realities at an international level (https://www.dais.unive.it/wass/). The data collected by the RON buoys are fundamental for the calibration / validation of the oceanographic models used for the short and medium-term prediction of the state of the sea (waves, tides, currents) today used for various purposes including, speaking precisely of the northern Adriatic, for example those relating to the management of MOSE (Venice’s flood barriers) operations. The results of this joint experiment will help researchers better understand the behavior of buoys during storm surges and improve the accuracy of their measurements.

At the following links you can find a video on the launch of the buoy at the Acqua Alta platform (made by ISPRA), a video of the buoy during the strong Bora storm of last 09 April and the link to the webcam installed on the Acqua Alta platform to see the buoy in real time (courtesy of ISMAR):

– launch of the buoy: https://youtu.be/739iOyTDYmg
– buoy in the storm: https://owncloud.ve.ismar.cnr.it/owncloud/index.php/s/RG1xplmoMEABnvZ
– webcam: http://www.ismar.cnr.it/infrastrutture/piattaforma-acqua-alta/webcam/webcam-streaming-est