By Dr. (Cdr) Arnab Das, Founder & Director of the Maritime Research Centre (MRC)
Image Courtesy: Marine Digital
C3S-NMF Two-Day National S&T Conference on
Revolutionizing Tomorrow: Paving Way for High Technology
Dr. (Cdr) Arnab Das is a researcher, maritime strategist and an entrepreneur. He is the Founder & Director of the Maritime Research Centre (MRC) under the Foundation for Underwater Domain Awareness (FUDA), Pune that is working on a unique concept of Underwater Domain Awareness (UDA) as its main focus. He is a visiting Professor at the Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT), Pune, He also runs his Start-up, M/S NirDhwani Technology Pvt Ltd that provides consultancies and services for high end maritime security solutions and marine conservation support. He advises start-ups on underwater technology solutions and defence strategies. He has over 70 publications and a book to his credit.
Arnab was commissioned as an electrical officer in 1994. He was deputed to IIT Delhi in 2001 for his Masters in Underwater Electronics and subsequently was appointed as the Project Officer at IIT Delhi to manage the Underwater R&D for Navy. He delivered multiple technology transfers including for the strategic submarine project related to underwater systems and algorithms. He also completed his PhD from IIT Delhi in 2007 in underwater signal processing.
He was invited to Tokyo University in 2014 as a visiting researcher to participate in design and development of passive acoustic monitoring systems for fresh water dolphins. He was also at the Acoustic Research Laboratory of the Tropical Marine Science Institute at the National University of Singapore in 2015 for a year, post his retirement from the Navy to understand underwater technology development from a global perspective.
Abstract
The maritime commons are getting global attention with heightened rush, being seen towards the resources and connectivity it provides. Global powers are maintaining their strategic assets in the maritime domain, at an unprecedented scale. This brings concerns of sustainability and climate change risk management at an unimaginable scale as well. The Indo-Pacific strategic space has become the de-facto theatre for global power play and therefore monitoring the activities and trends will allow effective management. Enhanced Underwater Domain Awareness (UDA), is thus the only way forward to manage the challenges and opportunities. The Indo-Pacific strategic space, by definition is the tropical waters of the Indian and the Pacific Oceans. These tropical waters, present unique characteristics in terms of biodiversity, abiotic resources, oceanographic aspects and more. The conventional UDA driven by the west and developed during the Cold War era, has been largely focused in the temperate and polar regions. These technologies and knowhow, do not work in the tropical waters and the degradation in sonar performance is of the order of 60%. Comprehensive digital transformation is the only way forward, manifested as Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP), across applications in the marine and the freshwater systems. MSP will be the key to building the Maritime Industry and the Blue Economy. The UDA framework provides, policy & technology interventions, along with the acoustic capacity & capability building to ensure, safe, secure, sustainable growth for all in the tropical waters. The presentation will cover the nuances of digital transformation, driven by the UDA framework.
Keywords: Digital Transformation, Marine Spatial Planning (MSP), Underwater Domain Awareness (UDA) Framework. Acoustic Capacity & Capability Building, Tropical Waters, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Underwater Robotics, Sustainable Blue Economy, Strategic Security, Climate Change Risk Management, Sonar, Ocean Governance, Freshwater Management, etc.
Read the full Conference paper at this link:
