Port Sentinels for Ecuador's Coastline
AXYS Technologies (Canada), together with Smart Electrónica of Guayaquil, has been awarded a contract to provide Instituto Oceanográfico de la Armada del Ecuador (INOCAR) with eight Port Sentinel coastal monitoring systems. The Port Sentinel systems will be installed at various locations along the coast of Ecuador and feature an integrated tide gauge to measure coastal water elevations in near real time, assisting in the national tsunami monitoring programme.
The Port Sentinels will be networked to the national tsunami control centre by the AXYS Data Management System (DMS) software suite and use GPRS telemetry to transmit data from each system to the control center. The DMS will allow INOCAR personnel at the control center to monitor each Port Sentinel system's diagnostics as well as perform remote system configurations, including sensor sampling periods and transmission intervals. The AXYS WatchMan500 controls each Port Sentinel system and allows INOCAR the ability to expand the sensor suite at each site as the monitoring requirements evolve.
Personnel from Smart Electrónica is to visit the AXYS facility in Sidney, British Columbia, for training on the Port Sentinel system in late November 2011. The systems will be shipped to Ecuador in early December with installation to be performed by Smart Electrónica later that month.
INOCAR is responsible for all exploration and research related to the oceanographic, geophysical, and environmental sciences in Ecuador. It manages hydrographic surveys, river and ocean development, navigational chart preparation and compilation, and coastal lighthouse, buoy and beacon infrastructure.
