COASTMAP: A Globally Re-Locatable, Real Time Marine environmental Monitoring and Modeling System, with Application to Narragansett Bay and Southern New England Coastal Waters

Researchers at the University of RI, Ocean Engineering; Applied Science Associates, Inc (ASA); Drexel University, Civil and Architectural Engineering; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Ocean Service; and Brown University have partnered in a three year (2000 to 2003), National Ocean Partnership Program (NOPP) sponsored study to develop a globally re-locatable, integrated system for real time observation, modeling, and data distribution for shelf, coastal sea, and estuarine waters. The core of the system, called COASTMAP, has been applied to Narragansett Bay and RI coastal waters to illustrate the practical use of the system. This paper provides an overview of the various components of the project and then highlights COASTMAP's globally, re-locatable design architecture including: data server, model client, professional client and web-based client. The paper presents examples of COASTMAP's embedded geographic information system, shows its ability to collect, manage, and analyze data from a wide variety of sources, summarizes linkages to environmental models (hydrodynamic, meteorological, oil/chemical spill transport and fate, search and rescue, atmospheric plumes from chemical releases) to provide now-casting and forecasting capabilities. It also illustrates the extension to support crisis management and incident command systems.