EurOCEAN 2000 - Vlaams Instituut voor de Zee

‰ B. Model investigations on operational aspects and forecast ability: Improvement of
operational and pre-operational coastal zone models regarding forecast-ability, field data
assimilation, and long-term stability and reliability in continuous operation.
‰ C. Integration of modelling, coastal monitoring, and user specifications: Goal is a
dedicated database structure as basic operational forecast segment of coastal zone
management information systems also suitable for GOOS (Global Ocean Observation
System) purposes.
There are many different hydrographic situations and coastal management problems relevant in
European waters. OPCOM intends to address a wide range of this spectrum. Thereby it is
convenient to pay special attention to suitable areas where a profound infrastructure of in-situ
data acquisition and validated model systems of coastal circulation and transport already exist
(e.g. Nöhren and Duwe [6]). Especially the problems of pollutant transport (or the
environmental impact assessment based on transport forecasts in general) are of great
importance and need a thorough modelling technique (Post [7], Duwe and Pfeiffer [1]). Within
OPCOM the following geographical areas were investigated:
- Bay of Marennes-Oléron (French Atlantic Coast)
- Elbe estuary (German North Sea Coast)
- Tagus estuary (Portuguese Atlantic Coast)
- Archipelago Sea and Luodonjärvi Lake (Bothnian Sea)
Starting with the MAST-project OPCOM in late 1997 the main goals were already defined.
Especially these goals and the planned approach to reach them were reasons enough for the EU
to fund this project. The highlights were:
- Four highly interesting target areas with first users eager to test the new OPCOM-products
to find solutions for their problems.
- A number of different model approaches were proposed for the application on a wide
range of hydrodynamic modelling and forecasting tasks.
- Optimisation of model codes and algorithms to make models faster and more reliable.
Specific local experiences from the OPCOM project are described in Freissinet et al. (2000),
Lauri et al. (2000), and Neves et al. (2000). These activities were also directed towards
- User defined requirements for operational models for the coastal management.
- New approaches to improve the reliability of coastal operational models.
- How to reproduce the coastal variability to improve operational model approaches.
Main objective in these local applications was how to help to protect the coastal environment
by means of e.g. expert systems for traffic guidance, sewage outlet control, environmental
monitoring of salinity variations on oyster banks, and nutrient transport between islands in a
non-tidal sea.
432