Abstract
Coastal forecast systems are used for many purposes, including harbor management, search and rescue operations, and response to extreme events. However, the generation and operation of these systems is time-consuming, requires expertise in both information technologies and modeling of coastal processes, and needs dedicated computational power. The new service OPENCoastS overcomes these difficulties by generating on-demand coastal circulation forecast systems through a web platform with minimal user intervention. Using a web platform, the user is guided through seven simple steps to generate an operational forecast system for any coastal region. The only requirements are an unstructured grid of the study area and information on river flow, if applicable. The platform provides ocean and atmospheric forcings and data for model validation, and includes interfaces for results visualization and forecasts management. Forecasts are generated with the community model SCHISM, and computing resources are provided through the European Open Science Cloud.
Highlights
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the oceanographic com munity started developing forecast systems to provide short-term pre dictions of ocean and coastal hydrodynamics (e.g., Clancy and Sadler, 1992; Brassington et al, 2007; Baptista et al, 2008; Mehra and Rivin, 2010)
The OPENCoastS service, presented builds on-demand cir culation forecast systems for user-selected coastal regions at a global level and maintains them running operationally for the time frame defined by the user, taking advantage of a transparent linkage to EOSChub resources and core services
This innovative concept and tool can be explored to address the needs of coastal managers, public in stitutions and private companies with responsibilities in emergency and monitoring purposes across Europe and worldwide, as OPENCoastS can support planning activities, from daily tasks to strategic interventions
Summary
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the oceanographic com munity started developing forecast systems to provide short-term pre dictions of ocean and coastal hydrodynamics (e.g., Clancy and Sadler, 1992; Brassington et al, 2007; Baptista et al, 2008; Mehra and Rivin, 2010). The OPENCoastS service aims at filling this need, supported by Eu ropean Open Science Cloud (EOSC) resources This service assembles ondemand circulation forecast systems for user-defined coastal areas and keeps them running operationally. The present paper describes OPENCoastS and il lustrates its application at estuarine and shelf scales This service is in operation in the Portuguese and Spanish infrastructures for Distributing Computing, in the framework of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) initiative. Issues related to model performance remain a concern for environmental applications, given the need for infrastruc ture abstraction and multi-tenancy occupation (O’Donncha et al, 2016) In spite of these challenges, cloud resources are the backbone of several complex modeling and data-based applications, providing computa tional power to many application fields
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