The contract, funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, was awarded to the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to develop equipment to support improved tsunami detection and warning.
The DART system was developed to detect tsunamis and forecast their impact along vulnerable coastlines. NOAA owns and operates an array of 39 DART buoys in the Pacific and Atlantic ocean basins, including the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean basins. When a tsunami wave moves across the ocean and reaches the DART, the surface buoy — utilizing data from a highly-accurate pressure sensor on the ocean floor — reports sea level information measurements back to the National Weather Service’s Tsunami Warning Centers, where the information is used to produce a tsunami forecast and fine-tune watches and warnings.
SAIC will develop more modern equipment to replace the existing equipment on the DART buoys, which is 20 years old. The new systems will make the data used to detect tsunamis more available and reliable, and improve the forecast of tsunami intensity and arrival times, as well as the predictions for how tsunami wave inundation would affect coastal communities.
Replacement of the equipment is expected to begin in 2025 and conclude in 2028.
The project is managed by NOAA’s National Data Buoy Center — a division of NOAA’s National Weather Service.