Marine information technology: the best is yet to come

摘要

Marine information technology (MarineIT) in-volves marine information gathering, transmission,processing, and fusion. Traditionally, this topic hasbeen referred to in the context of acoustic, optical, andelectromagnetic sensing of the ocean environment,most notably sonar/radar processing and satelliteremote sensing. As its embodiment becomes enrichedand its scope extends, particularly accompanied bythe advancements in cabled or wireless ocean obser-vation networks, it is fair to refer to MarineIT as adedicated discipline of information technologies.MarineIT plays an important role in many applica-tions, such as marine science research, environmentalexploration, resource exploitation, and security anddefense. Owing to its specific application domain, ithas also become a trending topic of the informationtechnology research.