Matthew Russell, director of the USS Arizona Preservation Project, said the NIST involvement began after 2001, when the memorial was commemmorated on the 60th anniversary of the attack. A higher level of public interest in the memorial that year brought increased funding to the agency for the research into how to best preserve the site in the future, especially related to growing concerns about potential oil leakage from below, he said.

No consensus has been reached on what to do about the growing threat of leakage, Russell said, but various options will be evaluated when the modeling is completed. The options include finding ways to slow the corrosion of the wreckage and to make repairs that will not affect the memorial.

Officials plan to have a report on the situation by Dec. 7, 2007, he said. Arizona Memorial administrators and Navy and Coast Guard officials will decide what course to follow, he said.

"We have to wait until we get more finalized predictions" from the modeling software, Russell said. "It's an ongoing process."

So far, it's still not known if the continuing deterioration of the Arizona will happen slowly or quickly, Russell said. The ship has been leaking fuel oil since it was sunk, in recent years at the rate of about a gallon a day. "When you visit the memorial, you can see the oil on the surface," Russell said.