Work program
To help understand the origins and measure noise radiated by ships, and to propose methods relevant to its reduction, the MARS project concentrates on five activities:

Activity 01
URNS Platform: design and operate a platform to measure underwater acoustic signatures radiated by ships (led by MTE-OPDAQ)
- Innovative design of the measurement platform
- Annual deployment (April) and recovery (November) of the platform
- Maintenance and calibration (annual)
Activity 02
Measuring and interpreting acoustic signatures on a representative portion of the maritime traffic (led by ISMER)
- Near-real-time assessment of the URN signatures of ships according to the ANSI/ASA S12/64-2009 standard (150–200 signatures per year)
- Analysis of the variability of measured signatures depending on hydrophone configuration
- Study of radiated noise in relation to the ship's operating parameters
- Analysis of the multi-source nature of ship noise
- Assessment the variations of the underwater soundscape recorded at URNS station
Activity 03
OBAVSI Equipment: design on-board acoustic and vibratory source identification systems (led by IMAR)
- Developing the measurement methodology
- Determining the size of the acoustic and vibratory sensor network
- Manufacturing the system (autonomous and communicating sensor networks)
Activity 04
Analysis methodology for on-board acoustics and vibratory diagnostics (led by IMAR)
- Development of an acoustic and vibration diagnostic methodology on board ships
- Diagnose the vibratory state of partner ships (x16)
- Install the OBAVSI equipment and perform synchronous measurements with passes by the URNS station
- Track instrumented vessels over long periods of time to increase the amount of data collected
- Preparing a general analysis of noise reduction technologies and energy efficiency impacts
Activity 05
Proposal of methods for reducing radiated noise and measuring their effectiveness (led by ISMER and IMAR)
- Development of a ship-radiated underwater noise forecasting model fed by on-board acoustic and vibration measurements; validation with URN signatures measured by the URNS station
- Proposal, implementation, and measurement of the effectiveness of noise reduction methods
- Studies of side-benefits such as reducing greenhouse gases and reducing on-board noise for workers