TriAXYS Directional Wave Sensor

The TriAXYS directional wave sensor is deployed on 7 of the ten buoys (excluding Susquehanna, Norfolk and Upper Potomac) throughout the Chesapeake Bay. The sensor measures the wave height, period and direction. It is powered on at 35 minutes past the hour and observes the waves for a duration of 20 minutes and then reports an averaged value at the top of the hour.

TriAXYS Directional Wave sensors are deployed on seven of the ten buoys throughout the Chesapeake Bay. The three buoys that do not have wave sensors are located in (1.) Norfolk, Viriginia, (2.) Upper Potomac near National Harbor, Maryland, and (3.) at the mouth of the Susquehanna River.

The data is all available free to the public in real-time on the following website: http://buoybay.noaa.gov. The files with custom date ranges are available to download in .csv file format. The data can also be accessed at other sites, including http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/ .

There are no data access constraints and all available to the public.

Currently, the CBIBS data is quality controlled in the CBIBS middleware system acting on incoming data. The data gets associated with a QC flag based on threshold values set for each parameter and the buoy status. The various flags include: -1 = Unknown(NaN), 0 = Good Data, 1 = Buoy Offline, 2 = Hard Limit Test Failed, 3 = Filled Value. The data will continue to be quality controlled in this way until QARTOD (Quality Assurance of Real-Time Ocean Data) standards are implemented or if the QARTOD standards are not used for a particular parameter.

QARTOD QC Tests will be applied in a module of the CBIBS middleware, acting on incoming data at 60 minute intervals and returning resultant flag values, which are stored with the data. Parameters for the tests, which can vary by Buoy, Sensor, Measurement Parameter, and Test Type, are stored in a dynamically accessible and editable QC Test matrix. There are Primary and Secondary Flags; Primary flags represent overall Data Quality, based on QARTOD Tests; Secondary flags complement the first level by providing the justification for the quality flags, based on quality control tests or data processing history.

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All data operations and storage take place on secure FISMA-compliant servers.

The TriAXYS directional wave sensor is powered on at 35 minutes past the hour and samples for a duration of 20 minutes. An average of the duration of sampling is reported to the Watchman500 in ASCII strings, which is sent to a shoreside server at the top of the hour via a cellular antenna. Once at the server, the data is processed (including assigning Qa/Qc flags) and then uploaded to the website in real-time.