State Of Decay 2 Knowledge Of Munitions

[Jarrell Campbell]

Courseof the expedition POS530. On the transits between the working areas, water samples were taken, which were analyzed for explosive-typical compounds and heavy metals. Map: Mareike Kampmeier / GEOMAR

Mareike Kampmeier from the Deep Sea Monitoring group uses high-resolution multibeam echo sounder data to map a restricted area in the Baltic Sea for a method to automatically detect mines. Photo: Christoph Kersten/GEOMAR

Photo mosaic with old ammunition in the dumping area Kolberger Heide, taken during the expedition AL548 in the framework of ExPloTect and BASTA with the help of the AUVs ANTON and LUISE. Photo: AUV team GEOMAR

Our oceans are polluted by significant quantities of conventional and chemical munitions. More than 1.5 million tons of ammunition lie at the bottom of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. After more than 70 years, old ammunition on the seabed is still a danger to humans and the marine environment, as it releases toxic substances such as TNT, mercury or lead as pollutants. It has been brought in by a wide variety of ways (for example, mining, sea battles, or shipwrecks). However, the largest amount comes from targeted sinkings after the end of World War II.

In the Baltic Sea, the munitions are clearly visible on the seabed and can be documented and mapped with underwater robots. Research has shown that chemical compounds typical of explosives are also present in the water beyond the dumping sites. This contamination will increase as corrosion progresses, with increasing risks if contaminated sites are not cleared. Rising temperatures and increasing storms accelerate the decay of munitions in the wake of climate change. In line with its coalition agreement, the German Federal Government therefore envisages an immediate programme to pilot ammunition recovery and clearance and intends to make 100 million euros available for this purpose by 2025.

Within the framework of various research projects, GEOMAR scientists document the distribution of these contaminated sites from the Second World War, investigate their effects on the environment and contribute to the development of options for recovery and clearance.

ProBaNNt

The project ProBaNNt (Professional intelligent munitions assessment using 3D reconstructions and Bayesian Neural Networks), running from 2021 to 2024, aims to improve decisions in marine ammunition clearance. Information on successful operations is collected in a database. In the field, easy-to-use software and AI algorithms are used to identify the most viable clearance option for a given ammunition object at a given location. ProBaNNt is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection as part of the Maritime Research Strategy.

AMMOTRACe

The AMMOTRACe project aims to develop new approaches for shipboard and on-site measurements to detect munitions compounds and chemical warfare agents in coastal systems in real time. The project, which will run from 2021 to 2024, is funded by the European Commission's Horizon 2020 MarTERA-ERA-NET Cofund program.

BASTA

From 2019 to 2022, researchers from GEOMAR, the Marine Institute Flanders (VLIZ), the software developer EGEOS GmbH and the Belgian survey service provider G-Tec SA developed methods for the collection, processing and interpretation of data on munitions waste in the sea in the BASTA project (Boost Applied munition detection through Smart data inTegration and AI workflows). The project was funded by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) under the Blue Labs programme with nearly one million euros.

ExPloTect

From 2019 to 2022, the project ExPloTect (Ex-situ, near-real-time exPlosive compound deTection in seawater) developed technologies to detect munitions-derived chemicals in seawater. The analysis in real-time supports the seabed mapping. The project was funded for by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) under the Blue Labs programme with nearly 900,000 euros.

UDEMM and RoBEMM

From 2016 to 2019, researchers from GEOMAR together with colleagues from Kiel University and the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemnde (IOW) investigated the effects of munitions underwater in the project UDEMM (Environmental Monitoring before, during and after DElaboration of Munitions in the Sea). UDEMM was closely linked to the technology project RoBEMM (Robot-assisted underwater salvage and disposal with technology for the removal of ordnance in the sea, especially in near-shore and shallow waters). This enabled recommendations to be made for an economically viable and environmentally friendly method for the in-situ delaboration of potentially hazardous mines and other explosives. UDEMM was funded 1.6 million Euros through the National Funding Programme Research for Sustainable Development (FONA) of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Marine Munition Data Compilation - Germany On the Marine Data Portal of the German Marine Research Alliance (DAM), various data sets from scientific projects, authorities and companies on the topic of "munitions in the sea" are compiled and made available on an interactive map. The Marine Munition Data Compilation - Germany was developed by the data management team of the CONMAR project and is updated regularly.

Tacit knowledge can itself be divided into two types. Personal tacit knowledge is held by individuals and can be conveyed from one person to another through a master-apprentice relationship (learning by example) or acquired by a lengthy process of trial-and-error problem solving (learning by doing). The amount of time required to gain personal tacit knowledge depends on the complexity of a task and the level of skill involved in its execution.[6] Moreover, such knowledge tends to decay if it is not practiced on a regular basis and transmitted to the next generation. Communal tacit knowledge is more complex because it is not held by a single individual but resides in an interdisciplinary team of specialists, each of whom has skills and experience that cohere into a larger scientific project or experimental protocol. This social dimension makes communal tacit knowledge particularly difficult to transfer from one laboratory to another, because doing so requires transplanting and replicating a complex set of technical practices in a new context.[7]

Field research by sociologists of science has shown that advanced biotechnologies such as whole-genome synthesis demand high levels of both personal and communal tacit knowledge. For example, Kathleen Vogel of Cornell University found that the Stony Brook researchers who synthesized the polio virus did not rely exclusively on written protocols but made extensive use of intuitive skills acquired through years of experience. Tacit knowledge was particularly important in one step of the process: preparing the cell-free extracts needed to translate the synthetic genome into infectious virus particles. If the cell-free extract was not prepared correctly by relying on subtle tricks and sensory cues, it proved impossible to reproduce the published experiment.[8]

Recent developments in scientific publishing also reflect the fact that the growing complexity of research tools and processes has increased the importance of tacit knowledge. One online scientific publication, the Journal of Visualized Experiments, has since 2006 used video recordings of experimental techniques to portray subtle details that cannot be captured in written form.[13] Other online repositories of research-protocol videos include Dnatube.com and SciVee.tv.[14] Based on such evidence, Vogel, along with Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley of George Mason University, have concluded that the technical and socio-organizational hurdles involved in whole-genome synthesis pose a major obstacle to the ability of terrorist organizations to exploit this technology for harmful purposes.[15]

De-skilling has already occurred in several genetic-engineering techniques that have been around for more than twenty years, including gene cloning (copying foreign genes in bacteria), transfection (introducing foreign genetic material into a cell), ligation (stitching fragments of DNA together), and the polymerase chain reaction, or PCR (which makes it possible to copy any particular DNA sequence several million-fold). Although one must have access to natural genetic material to use these techniques, the associated skill sets have diffused widely across the international scientific community. In fact, a few standard genetic-engineering techniques have been de-skilled to the point that they are now accessible to undergraduates and even advanced high school students, and could therefore be appropriated fairly easily by terrorist groups.

Along similar lines, virologist Jens Kuhn has called for a more nuanced assessment of the technical challenges involved in de novo viral synthesis. He notes, for example, that constructing the polio virus from scratch was fairly straightforward because its genome is small and consists of a single positive strand of RNA that, when placed in a cell-free extract, spontaneously directs the production of viral proteins, which then self-assemble to yield infectious viral particles. By contrast, the genomes of negative-strand RNA viruses, such as Ebola or the 1918 strain of influenza, are not infectious by themselves but require the presence of viral helper proteins, which must be synthesized and present in the host cells in the right numbers. Because such reverse-genetic systems are relatively difficult to create, only a limited number of scientists have the requisite skills and tacit knowledge.[20]

Whether such rosy predictions come true will depend on, among other things, the degree to which synthetic biology is de-skilled in the future. Looking at the historical record, scientific claims about de-skilling have been made repeatedly in the past but have often failed to materialize. For example, Helen Anne Curry, a graduate student in the history of science at Yale, has studied the development of plant-breeding techniques from 1925 to 1955. She found that during this period, agricultural interests promised that the use of radium, x-rays, and chemicals to generate genetic mutations would facilitate the creation of new and useful plant varieties, and that these methods would soon become available to amateur gardeners. But in fact, although the breeding techniques did result in novel varieties of roses and orchids, the predictions about de-skilling never came to pass.[31]

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