Politics & Government

Potomac River Home to Solar-Powered Buoy, New Tool for Pentagon

The buoy sits in the Potomac river far south of Georgetown in Maryland.

Drivers on U.S. 301 crossing the Gov. Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge in Maryland might have noticed a yellow buoy, bobbing in the Potomac River.

Since October, the new solar-powered buoy has been sending signals to Intellicheck Mobilisa, a developer of identity and wireless security systems. Vital information about the river is then passed on to federal agencies including the Department of the Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), among others.

The buoy is one of only eight of its kind currently in use. The other seven are stationed on the Puget Sound. They collect environmental and security data and use the company’s Wireless Over Water (WOW) technology to transmit the data to the shore Network Operations Center (NOC) for dissemination.

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Why the Potomac?

The proximity to the client, i.e. the Navy, just made sense, according to Steve Williams, the company's CEO who is based in Alexandria, VA.

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"It's kind of hard for them to see it 4,000 miles away," Williams said, referring to the seven in Puget Sound.

In 2009, Intellicheck was awarded a $4.5 million U.S. Navy contract to expand an existing security buoy project in Puget Sound, and a year later, was awarded an additional $500,000 from the Navy.

Now the Navy can look at real-time data and is testing out the newly deployed radiation detection censor on the Potomac buoy. The buoy can detect anything that would create an anomaly, including radiation that goes outside of the acceptable range, according to Williams.

The devices are capable of detecting materials above, on or below the surface of the water, and can measure water temperature, pH balance and turbidity, as well as changes in the wind.

When NOAA learned of the buoy's capabilities, the agency requested access to the real-time data to fill the gap in NOAA's ability to detect wind shear.

With the buoy data, NOAA can now identify microbursts and wind shear ahead of and after a storm and report them to pilots in the air, Williams explained. Additionally, since the Potomac buoy is near a bridge, NOAA can now suggest local authorities close the bridge if the winds before or after a storm are too dangerous.

Williams said there is a real challenge in many jurisdictions with monitoring waterfront areas. He said the company "probably [has] 15 cities that have submitted for a grant or other funding to be able to deploy the buoys for either environmental or defense purposes."

Though the device was originally created for environmental purposes, the military implications are clear.

“The Wireless Security Buoys project has been recognized as a vital source for port security" Williams said.


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