Military and naval decompression

Navies published decompression tables and ran chamber and open-water trials. Some of that work is in the public record. The rest is known only from citations.

A diver in the DSEND atmospheric diving suit during a test-pool dive.Michael Walls / U.S. Navy

Naval trial collections

Model fitting and scoring use a small number of named United States Navy collections.

NMRI98
4,335 exposures, 223 cases
BIG292
3,322 exposures, 190 cases
VVal-79 validation trial
96 exposures, 0 cases

Each bar shows the exposure and decompression sickness counts as the source literature reports them, all drawn to one scale. The darker part of each bar is the reported cases. BIG292 also records 110 marginal outcomes, symptoms too mild to count as decompression sickness cases. Every BIG292 exposure is also in NMRI98. A model fitted on one collection and then scored against the other is being scored on data it was trained on, so that score does not show how it handles new exposures.

Evidence tiers

OpenDeco works from lawfully public or appropriately licensed material. Every defence source falls into one of three tiers. The tier determines whether OpenDeco can rebuild the source, only cite it, or log it as a gap.

Scroll the table sideways to reach every column.

Tier	What the source provides	How OpenDeco handles it
Reproducible	The table, the procedure and enough parameter detail to rebuild a schedule and check it against the original.	Rebuilt and compared against other documented procedures where the data support it.
Documented	A report of the work and its findings. The data behind it, the individual dive profiles and the recorded decompression sickness incidents, are not included.	Read and cited. Reanalysis waits for the underlying data.
Cited only	A citation and nothing else. Either the work was never released, or it has not survived.	Logged as a gap in the record, with the reason given.

Naval trial collections

Evidence tiers

Related sections