8 June 2019 | New Scientist | 13MORE than 80 per cent of the
world’s oceans are currently
unmapped, but a $7 million prize
pool to explore the deep sea hopes
to change that. The Shell Ocean
Discovery XPrize was awarded
last week to teams using uncrewed
deep-sea vehicles to map the ocean
floor and to trace chemical signals
underwater. The goal is to create
a comprehensive atlas by 2030.
For the mapping prize,
competitors had to develop
an autonomous vessel capable
of surveying at least 250 square
kilometres of the sea floor within
24 hours, up to a depth of
4 kilometres. The maps should
be fairly high resolution, with
data points taken no more than
5 metres apart.
The vessel also had to capture
10 images from the ocean floor
of archaeological, biological or
geological features. Finalists
were tested at a site off the coast
of Kalamata in Greece late last year.
The $4 million first prize was
awarded to GEBCO-NF Alumni,
based in the US. Their vessel, the
Sea-Kit, used sonar to determine
water depth and a cloud-based
computing system that produced
an ocean map within 48 hours.
The deep-sea craft is carried by
an uncrewed surface vessel to a
target site, where it then launches.
A comprehensive map of the
world’s oceans may find old
shipwrecks and uncover new
species and materials, says Jyotika
Virmani, executive director of the
Ocean Discovery XPrize. “The deep
sea is the world’s largest museum,
and we don’t have access to it right
now,” she says. Exploration is made
more difficult by extreme conditions
like darkness, high pressure and cold.
For the chemical sensing prize,
worth $1 million, entrants had to
develop a vessel that could detect a
chemical signal and autonomously
track it back to its source. ❚
Analysis Well-beingNew Zealand wants to make people happy The country’s
latest budget claims to put well-being above economic
performance. Will it work, asks Ruby Prosser ScullyNEW ZEALAND’S latest budget,
unveiled last week, is being
touted as the first in a Western
country to prioritise well-being
over economic performance.
The country’s prime minister,
Jacinda Ardern, promised billions
of dollars in additional funding to
address mental health problems,
suicide and child poverty. Almost
NZ$2 billion (£1 billion) is
earmarked for mental health
services, after another year of
the country having the highest
teen and young adult suicide
rates in the developed world.
As well as boosting existing
mental health services, more
money will be used to help
people with mild or moderate
mental health issues to prevent
their health worsening. More
than NZ$1 billion will go to
addressing child poverty, and
almost NZ$200 million to
providing long-term shelter
for people who are homeless.
“We have laid the foundation
for not just one well-being
budget, but a different approach
for government decision-making
altogether,” said Ardern (picturedabove with government ministers)
while unveiling the budget.
The budget aims to downplay
the importance of gross domestic
product (GDP), a measurement of
a country’s economic activity that
is normally seen as a key indicator
of success. But despite what
Ardern and her team suggest,
no budgets are solely about GDP.
“All budgets in pretty much
all developed countries are
well-being budgets,” says
Arthur Grimes at Motu economic
research institute, New Zealand.
He says that the definition of
well-being is welfare, and virtually
every budget funds poverty relief,
mental health and housing.
Grimes is also sceptical of how
well-being will be measured, with
around 60 different indicators
proposed. “In my view, that’s a
really scattergun approach,” he
says. Child poverty is the only
metric currently being tracked,he says, making it difficult to
assess the budget’s success.
One way of tracking well-being
is to ask people how they rate their
lives. But it might take several years
for policies to shift the population’s
aggregated well-being compared
with other countries – beyond the
short time span politicians work in.
However, the government could
use self-reported questionnaires
to assess specific interventions,
such as someone’s well-being
before and after they move into
public housing, Grimes suggests.
New Zealand isn’t the first
country to prioritise well-being.
Bhutan has discussed the needto value happiness over economic
growth since the 1970s, and
introduced a “gross national
happiness index” in 2008.
France launched a well-being
framework in 2009 that led
to ongoing tracking of “new
indicators of wealth”, including
poverty, education, healthy life
expectancy and income inequality.
The UK also had a short-lived
attempt at bringing well-being to
the forefront under former prime
minister David Cameron. Although
it hasn’t overtaken GDP in budget
discussions, the UK’s Office for
National Statistics continues to
track well-being, giving insights
into the population’s life
satisfaction and happiness.
Perhaps the key difference
between New Zealand and other
countries is that New Zealand is
trumpeting the importance of
well-being with its budget. It might
take years for the machinery of
government to come around to it,
but reframing the terms of a
nation’s success could start now. ❚Oceanography
Donna Lu
Uncrewed deep-sea
robots will help map
the world’s oceans
SC
OTT^ EBARBOUR/GET
TYWell-being will
become the focus
in New Zealand“The UK had a short-lived
attempt at bringing well-
being to the forefront
under David Cameron”MARK
COOT
E/BLOOMBERG^ VIA^ GET
TY
IM
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