Saturday, February 18, 2012

Scientists honoured for inventing tech to unravel mystery of ocean basins



Chennai:
Seven scientists from the city’s National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), an autonomous organization under Ministry of Earth Sciences, won prestigious National Geo Science Award for the successful development of a Remotely Operable Vehicle (ROV) to unravel many mysteries of ocean basins in India.
NIOT director Dr M A Atmanand, project director Dr G A Ramadass, Dr S Ramesh, AN Subramanian, Dr D Sathianarayanan, R Ramesh, and G Harikrishnan  were honoured by the Ministry of Mines under Oil and Natural Gas Exploration and Disaster Management  categories.
The scientists are brain behind the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), a remotely controlled underwater vehicle, that can move in the sea with the help of thrusters and hosts scientific payload like sonars, cameras, chemical and physical oceanographic sensors.

NIOT spokesman said the technology was deployed at potential Gas Hydrate site in Krishna Godavari basin of Bay of Bengal with scientific payload at a depth of 1019 metres during 2009 and at a depth of 5289 m in Poly-metallic Manganese Nodule site in Central Indian Ocean Basin during April 2010. “India joined a select club of a few nations to own the technology of this kind,” the spokesman added.

Similarly, two more scientists of NIOT Dr M V Ramanamurthy and Tata Sudhakar won the award for their work on Tsunami Early Warning Systems.

The scientists were instrumental in development of observation network by way of deploying Bottom Pressure Recorders (BPR) in Deep Ocean and development of numerical model for prediction of Tsunami impact on coast.  

Constant efforts are being made at NIOT to augment the warning system to cater needs of Regional Advisory Services to Indian Ocean Countries like inversion of Tsunami data collected by BPR’s to accurately estimate earthquake source potential, improving of BPR technology to suit Indian ocean region and development of far field numerical models to predict the Tsunami propagation across the globe.

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