The University of New Hampshire in Durham has broken ground on a 70,500-square-foot building that will house the Center of Excellence for Operational Ocean and Great Lakes Mapping.
The university says that construction of the facility is supported by funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Institute for Standards and Technology.
The building also will accommodate a growing number of industry partners seeking to collaborate with the university.
“This new building will provide an advanced facility for our world-renowned Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping and expand UNH’s decades-long leadership in hydrographic excellence,” says University President Elizabeth Chilton.
The facility is expected to open in fall 2027.
Since 1999, NOAA and the university have collaborated under a cooperative agreement that enables NOAA to operate the Joint Hydrographic Center and Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping on the New Hampshire campus. Since its inception in 1999, the center has mapped more than a million square kilometers of ocean floor, discovered shipwrecks, helped the federal government respond to natural and manmade disasters, and pioneered the use of autonomous vehicles to map and collect data from the ocean floor.
The facilitiy is being built in Durham about a mile from the center of campus. It will have office and instructional space, as well as two large, high-ceiling areas with overhead cranes — known as a high bays — for storing, outfitting, and staging bulky equipment and small vessels.
About half of the facility will consist of a high bay and offices for industry partners to co-locate, share equipment, and leverage access to university researchers and students.
Since 2022, the number of companies co-locating at UNH has grown by more than 400%, an indication of the increasing demand for industry co-location.
