Final Report Summary - FIELD_AC (Fluxes, interactions and environment at the land-ocean boundary. downscaling, assimilation and coupling)
Executive summary:
The FIELD_AC project (Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) Space call funded by European Commission) has shown the possibility to achieve reliable predictions of wind / wave / current / water quality / sediment transport in the coastal zone with a high level of detail. This means having advance information on the state of the sea and the resulting coastal zone status for decisions such as closing beaches after a storm (due to polluted water quality) or for actions directed to reduce risk levels under a storm (due to combined waves and rain). The improved and more efficient (cheaper) predictions have also served to establish the safe time interval to transport concrete 'caissons' to a harbour construction site or to enrich the coastal wiki with knowledge for present and future generations.
The European Union (EU) research project FIELD_AC has dealt with the improvement of the reliability of such coastal zone predictions based on the best available modelling tools, the offshore boundary conditions provided by the 'core' services (such as MYOCEAN) and the satellite plus in situ data available in four characteristic field sites.
These field sites, because of their permanent monitoring, can serve as a bench mark test case for other EU coastal zones. They are:
i) the Catalan coastal zone;
ii) the Gulf of Venice;
iii) the German Bight; %K iv) the Liverpool bay.
The obtained advances in knowledge and modelling of coastal regions have allowed a more reliable and efficient (cheaper) set of predictions in the coastal zone for physical parameters such as wind, waves, currents or mean sea level. The improvement also extends to ecological parameters (such as the onset of the spring blooms), water quality parameters (such as dispersion of sewage outfalls) or morphodynamic parameters (such as suspended sediment transport under a storm). These advances stem from a careful coupling of high-resolution models that has shown how the use of high resolution, fully-coupled wave and hydrodynamic models leads to significantly different wave fields, which in situ measurements proved to be more accurate.
The necessity to increase spatial resolution and, at the same time, emphasising the coupling mechanisms amongst different numerical models, has allowed FIELD_AC to prove that current-wave interactions is very often a necessity for coastal areas, even in the north-western Mediterranean where it was previously disregarded.
The issue of mutual interactions between 'parent' and 'child' numerical domains, or between meteorological and oceanographic processes, has been the core of the FIELD_AC research and it is likely that it will represent a cutting-edge science aspect for the next decade of research in this field. Benefits resulting from FIELD_AC achievements may be expected at operational forecasting (order of days) and climatic analysis scales (order of one decade), and therefore illustrate a wide range of potential applications of the obtained results.
The application of these advances to the modelling tools has supported the establishment of a new private company and to reinforce the technology of another, already existing, high-tech company. They have used our results in commercial applications in Europe (e.g. Spain and Norway), America (e.g. Brazil) and Australia. Finally our results are also being considered (e.g. new formulation for friction on the sea-bed) for improving state of the art models in other EU institutions.
Project context and objectives:
The coastal zone is exposed to increasing levels of population, activities and, as a consequence, assets at risk. This requires, as clearly identified at the beginning of the project a higher accuracy and reliability of meteo-oceanographic predictions that encompass a wider range of physical and ecological variables than what was previously available. As an illustration the discharge from the continent (via rivers or distributed land discharge) into the coastal sea is a 'must' if we want to predict the water quality status near coastal cities, tourist beaches or rich aquaculture or fishery areas.
FIELD_AC has addressed this problem that generates growing social concern by:
1. Implementing a sequence of coupled and nested meteo-oceanographic models that simulate the atmospheric and hydrodynamic fields (wind, atmospheric pressure, waves, current and associated transport). This allows a robust high-resolution simulation provided that the coastal scale parameterisations are updated and incorporate the new processes that appear near the coastal zone (e.g. the surf zone circulatory system).
2. Structuring the data and metadata from in situ observations in the coastal zone for the four studied coastal sites.
3. Structuring the remote observations (data and metadata as well) that, combined with the in situ data has provided a level of information for the four studied coastal domains not available before and which has also served for an efficient validation of numerical models and, eventually for an assessment of the quality of remote images near the land-sea boundary.
4. Establishing a common bench mark case, the Catalan coast, where the various modelling sequences have been run using the same meteorological driving field (provided by one of the partners) to test the performance limits of advanced European computational tools against those coming from other countries (notably the United States) and in terms of the validation performed with in situ and remote observations.
5. Performing a comparison of the nested modelling approaches by the various partners with emphasis on commercial codes (such as e.g. those used by DHI or SIMO) with 'traditional' models that much less user friendly have however benefited from a longer period of validation (e.g. associated to the research track of the participating institutions which cover more than three decades). This has served to establish the pros and cons of commercial versus research tools and establishing their particular limitations.
6. Preparing and testing the methodology to assimilate coastal scale, even local observations into a modelling sequence. The added value of combining point wise and spatially distributed observations into a coupled and nested modelling suite has also been assessed.
7. Analysing the effect of boundary conditions both from the offshore and from the land site into the obtained model results. This has served to revisit the concept of coastal zone width which for the water part (equally for the land part) is a dynamic definition depending on the prevailing processes and their energy level. This has also informed the quality and robustness of results in our studied coastal domains where most of the computational grid points are affected by information provided through the boundaries.
8. Paying particular emphasis to the accessibility and quality of MyOcean products as a boundary condition for the offshore part of our domains since our simulations have been considered from the beginning a downstreaming activity of the MyOcean products offered by the marine core services.
9. Preparing and testing a transfer protocol for our data and simulations to all interested end users and stake holders. The emphasis has been on both elements, since the observations and the simulations have proved to be two sides of the same coin, in the sense that some of our end users could only be 'convinced' of the value of high-resolution simulations after seeing the same features in the observations (e.g. the intensification of current velocities near the Barcelona harbour entrance which, although a long standing complain of the harbour pilots had never been accepted by the authorities until first our simulations and then our measurements showed it).
10. Promoting the long-term exploitation of project results by storing them into the expertise of the participating Universities and research centres (where they have been used to launch continuation research projects) and into the two participating private companies (where they have been used for further commercial applications). In this respect special mention deserves the project spin-off SIMO which has gained visibility and a market niche thanks to the FIELD_AC project.
To raise social awareness and to build up social confidence on the performed simulations we have selected four case studies that cover northern Europe (Liverpool Bay and German Bight) and southern Europe (Catalan coast and Venice gulf). Our selection of case studies encompasses a wide range of geographical settings, from open sea (Catalan coast) to estuary (Liverpool Bay) or lagoon (Venice Gulf) conditions. It also covers from micro to macro tidal conditions (from the Catalan coast to Liverpool Bay) incorporating also two cases of meso tidal conditions (German Bight and Venice Gulf). The studied cases also encompass from continuous continental discharge (Northern Europe cases) to flash flood torrential type of meteo-patterns (Mediterranean cases). The wave conditions go also from mild to energetic and the social and economic pressures represent a wide variety, representative of the European coast.
Regarding the generation of user driven results we have started the project with the organisation of four workshops (all of them in 2010, from July to November) in the four studied sites. The invited users or receivers of project results have covered the various socio-economic sectors that converge in the coastal zone and they can be illustrated by coastal and river authorities, harbour authorities, fishermen, aquaculture companies, water quality agencies, construction firms, consultancy firms, environmental groups, etc. All the participants in the workshop received a questionnaire and were interviewed at various stages during the project development to achieve a two way interaction where the project researchers conveyed results and got in exchange ideas and practical criteria for enhancing the usefulness of our simulations. This has been particularly triggered by the presence of two private companies (DHI and SIMO) within the partnership and has resulted in an efficient transmission to society of the advances in technology and scientific aspects obtained within the project.
SIMO in particular has been created within FIELD_AC and is still, three years after its starting date, operating with a consolidated staff of six and with a fan of activities that go from visualisation tools to the use of meteo-oceanographic predictions for supporting navigation routes, coastal construction activities or the impact prevention for accidental oil spills.
In this transfer of project production the DHI partner has supported tremendously the transfer of advances to the worldwide market that they have. Moreover the linkage between a well-established company from Northern Europe and a recently created university spin-off in southern Europe, has proved an interesting experience and a natural transfer of know-how.
The dissemination to the general public has included a variety of communication means such as television, newspapers and the wiki. These have served to reflect on the project advances and to distil the socially more relevant elements for public dissemination.
The international context has been represented by our international advisory board (IAB) and project presentations in specially organised sessions at international conferences such as EGU (European Geosciences Union). In the IAB we have counted with representatives from the US, one of the clearer competitors of European technology in the field of coastal oceanography. We have had IAB representatives from the government (United States Geological Survey (USGS)) and private groups (such as Applied Science Associates, Inc. (ASA)). The exchanges have crystallised in two visits (from both sites), participation in the IAB meetings and stages of researchers at USGS. The fact that one of UPC old students is part of the US private company has also served to consolidate the links. This has allowed a much better informed use of the ROMS code (a world reference where FIELD_AC has contributed and gained a name in the international arena for high-resolution simulations). It has also served to steer our production of results towards a more practical setting, a clear US component that must be acknowledged. This has contributed to making explicit the uncertainty intervals of our simulations and combining physical predictions with statistical descriptors.
We have also presented the results of our research to a wider group of researchers and countries, via the international conference presentations and the invited members from third country universities and government (covering from China to Bulgaria and Romania for instance) where the main findings from FIELD_AC have been presented and discussed, together with their applicability to other environments not studied in the project (for instance applications of the ROMS simulations to the Black Sea).
EU and international research dimension of the project have been also presented in structured conference sessions notably at EGU 2012 and 2013. The emphasis here has been on the concept of a 'coastal operational framework' where a virtual or physical linkage of codes, measurements and simulated results has been presented in a consistent manner. Because of that the title of the session organised at EGU-2012 (to be repeated in 2013 in the wake of Field_AC) was 'Oceanography at coastal scales. Modelling, coupling and observations'. This summarises the concept of the project in the sense that an efficient transfer of results to interested social parts can only be achieved by a smart combination of these three elements. That was the rationale for selecting the Field_AC partners (expertise on processes and models by combining Universities and research centres together with commercial companies) the four studied sites (including four of the EU coastal observatories with a better and longer set of data) and end users (encompassing the large variety of economic sectors with presence or interests in the coastal zone).
Project results:
Due to the limitation to include figures through this application, this section has been reported in the enclosed file named:
'FIELD_AC_Final_Report_D6_4_V1.pdf'
Potential impact:
Due to the limitation to include figures through this application, this section has been reported in the enclosed file named:
'FIELD_AC_Final_Report_D6_4_V1.pdf'
List of websites: http://www.fieldac.eu
The FIELD_AC project (Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) Space call funded by European Commission) has shown the possibility to achieve reliable predictions of wind / wave / current / water quality / sediment transport in the coastal zone with a high level of detail. This means having advance information on the state of the sea and the resulting coastal zone status for decisions such as closing beaches after a storm (due to polluted water quality) or for actions directed to reduce risk levels under a storm (due to combined waves and rain). The improved and more efficient (cheaper) predictions have also served to establish the safe time interval to transport concrete 'caissons' to a harbour construction site or to enrich the coastal wiki with knowledge for present and future generations.
The European Union (EU) research project FIELD_AC has dealt with the improvement of the reliability of such coastal zone predictions based on the best available modelling tools, the offshore boundary conditions provided by the 'core' services (such as MYOCEAN) and the satellite plus in situ data available in four characteristic field sites.
These field sites, because of their permanent monitoring, can serve as a bench mark test case for other EU coastal zones. They are:
i) the Catalan coastal zone;
ii) the Gulf of Venice;
iii) the German Bight; %K iv) the Liverpool bay.
The obtained advances in knowledge and modelling of coastal regions have allowed a more reliable and efficient (cheaper) set of predictions in the coastal zone for physical parameters such as wind, waves, currents or mean sea level. The improvement also extends to ecological parameters (such as the onset of the spring blooms), water quality parameters (such as dispersion of sewage outfalls) or morphodynamic parameters (such as suspended sediment transport under a storm). These advances stem from a careful coupling of high-resolution models that has shown how the use of high resolution, fully-coupled wave and hydrodynamic models leads to significantly different wave fields, which in situ measurements proved to be more accurate.
The necessity to increase spatial resolution and, at the same time, emphasising the coupling mechanisms amongst different numerical models, has allowed FIELD_AC to prove that current-wave interactions is very often a necessity for coastal areas, even in the north-western Mediterranean where it was previously disregarded.
The issue of mutual interactions between 'parent' and 'child' numerical domains, or between meteorological and oceanographic processes, has been the core of the FIELD_AC research and it is likely that it will represent a cutting-edge science aspect for the next decade of research in this field. Benefits resulting from FIELD_AC achievements may be expected at operational forecasting (order of days) and climatic analysis scales (order of one decade), and therefore illustrate a wide range of potential applications of the obtained results.
The application of these advances to the modelling tools has supported the establishment of a new private company and to reinforce the technology of another, already existing, high-tech company. They have used our results in commercial applications in Europe (e.g. Spain and Norway), America (e.g. Brazil) and Australia. Finally our results are also being considered (e.g. new formulation for friction on the sea-bed) for improving state of the art models in other EU institutions.
Project context and objectives:
The coastal zone is exposed to increasing levels of population, activities and, as a consequence, assets at risk. This requires, as clearly identified at the beginning of the project a higher accuracy and reliability of meteo-oceanographic predictions that encompass a wider range of physical and ecological variables than what was previously available. As an illustration the discharge from the continent (via rivers or distributed land discharge) into the coastal sea is a 'must' if we want to predict the water quality status near coastal cities, tourist beaches or rich aquaculture or fishery areas.
FIELD_AC has addressed this problem that generates growing social concern by:
1. Implementing a sequence of coupled and nested meteo-oceanographic models that simulate the atmospheric and hydrodynamic fields (wind, atmospheric pressure, waves, current and associated transport). This allows a robust high-resolution simulation provided that the coastal scale parameterisations are updated and incorporate the new processes that appear near the coastal zone (e.g. the surf zone circulatory system).
2. Structuring the data and metadata from in situ observations in the coastal zone for the four studied coastal sites.
3. Structuring the remote observations (data and metadata as well) that, combined with the in situ data has provided a level of information for the four studied coastal domains not available before and which has also served for an efficient validation of numerical models and, eventually for an assessment of the quality of remote images near the land-sea boundary.
4. Establishing a common bench mark case, the Catalan coast, where the various modelling sequences have been run using the same meteorological driving field (provided by one of the partners) to test the performance limits of advanced European computational tools against those coming from other countries (notably the United States) and in terms of the validation performed with in situ and remote observations.
5. Performing a comparison of the nested modelling approaches by the various partners with emphasis on commercial codes (such as e.g. those used by DHI or SIMO) with 'traditional' models that much less user friendly have however benefited from a longer period of validation (e.g. associated to the research track of the participating institutions which cover more than three decades). This has served to establish the pros and cons of commercial versus research tools and establishing their particular limitations.
6. Preparing and testing the methodology to assimilate coastal scale, even local observations into a modelling sequence. The added value of combining point wise and spatially distributed observations into a coupled and nested modelling suite has also been assessed.
7. Analysing the effect of boundary conditions both from the offshore and from the land site into the obtained model results. This has served to revisit the concept of coastal zone width which for the water part (equally for the land part) is a dynamic definition depending on the prevailing processes and their energy level. This has also informed the quality and robustness of results in our studied coastal domains where most of the computational grid points are affected by information provided through the boundaries.
8. Paying particular emphasis to the accessibility and quality of MyOcean products as a boundary condition for the offshore part of our domains since our simulations have been considered from the beginning a downstreaming activity of the MyOcean products offered by the marine core services.
9. Preparing and testing a transfer protocol for our data and simulations to all interested end users and stake holders. The emphasis has been on both elements, since the observations and the simulations have proved to be two sides of the same coin, in the sense that some of our end users could only be 'convinced' of the value of high-resolution simulations after seeing the same features in the observations (e.g. the intensification of current velocities near the Barcelona harbour entrance which, although a long standing complain of the harbour pilots had never been accepted by the authorities until first our simulations and then our measurements showed it).
10. Promoting the long-term exploitation of project results by storing them into the expertise of the participating Universities and research centres (where they have been used to launch continuation research projects) and into the two participating private companies (where they have been used for further commercial applications). In this respect special mention deserves the project spin-off SIMO which has gained visibility and a market niche thanks to the FIELD_AC project.
To raise social awareness and to build up social confidence on the performed simulations we have selected four case studies that cover northern Europe (Liverpool Bay and German Bight) and southern Europe (Catalan coast and Venice gulf). Our selection of case studies encompasses a wide range of geographical settings, from open sea (Catalan coast) to estuary (Liverpool Bay) or lagoon (Venice Gulf) conditions. It also covers from micro to macro tidal conditions (from the Catalan coast to Liverpool Bay) incorporating also two cases of meso tidal conditions (German Bight and Venice Gulf). The studied cases also encompass from continuous continental discharge (Northern Europe cases) to flash flood torrential type of meteo-patterns (Mediterranean cases). The wave conditions go also from mild to energetic and the social and economic pressures represent a wide variety, representative of the European coast.
Regarding the generation of user driven results we have started the project with the organisation of four workshops (all of them in 2010, from July to November) in the four studied sites. The invited users or receivers of project results have covered the various socio-economic sectors that converge in the coastal zone and they can be illustrated by coastal and river authorities, harbour authorities, fishermen, aquaculture companies, water quality agencies, construction firms, consultancy firms, environmental groups, etc. All the participants in the workshop received a questionnaire and were interviewed at various stages during the project development to achieve a two way interaction where the project researchers conveyed results and got in exchange ideas and practical criteria for enhancing the usefulness of our simulations. This has been particularly triggered by the presence of two private companies (DHI and SIMO) within the partnership and has resulted in an efficient transmission to society of the advances in technology and scientific aspects obtained within the project.
SIMO in particular has been created within FIELD_AC and is still, three years after its starting date, operating with a consolidated staff of six and with a fan of activities that go from visualisation tools to the use of meteo-oceanographic predictions for supporting navigation routes, coastal construction activities or the impact prevention for accidental oil spills.
In this transfer of project production the DHI partner has supported tremendously the transfer of advances to the worldwide market that they have. Moreover the linkage between a well-established company from Northern Europe and a recently created university spin-off in southern Europe, has proved an interesting experience and a natural transfer of know-how.
The dissemination to the general public has included a variety of communication means such as television, newspapers and the wiki. These have served to reflect on the project advances and to distil the socially more relevant elements for public dissemination.
The international context has been represented by our international advisory board (IAB) and project presentations in specially organised sessions at international conferences such as EGU (European Geosciences Union). In the IAB we have counted with representatives from the US, one of the clearer competitors of European technology in the field of coastal oceanography. We have had IAB representatives from the government (United States Geological Survey (USGS)) and private groups (such as Applied Science Associates, Inc. (ASA)). The exchanges have crystallised in two visits (from both sites), participation in the IAB meetings and stages of researchers at USGS. The fact that one of UPC old students is part of the US private company has also served to consolidate the links. This has allowed a much better informed use of the ROMS code (a world reference where FIELD_AC has contributed and gained a name in the international arena for high-resolution simulations). It has also served to steer our production of results towards a more practical setting, a clear US component that must be acknowledged. This has contributed to making explicit the uncertainty intervals of our simulations and combining physical predictions with statistical descriptors.
We have also presented the results of our research to a wider group of researchers and countries, via the international conference presentations and the invited members from third country universities and government (covering from China to Bulgaria and Romania for instance) where the main findings from FIELD_AC have been presented and discussed, together with their applicability to other environments not studied in the project (for instance applications of the ROMS simulations to the Black Sea).
EU and international research dimension of the project have been also presented in structured conference sessions notably at EGU 2012 and 2013. The emphasis here has been on the concept of a 'coastal operational framework' where a virtual or physical linkage of codes, measurements and simulated results has been presented in a consistent manner. Because of that the title of the session organised at EGU-2012 (to be repeated in 2013 in the wake of Field_AC) was 'Oceanography at coastal scales. Modelling, coupling and observations'. This summarises the concept of the project in the sense that an efficient transfer of results to interested social parts can only be achieved by a smart combination of these three elements. That was the rationale for selecting the Field_AC partners (expertise on processes and models by combining Universities and research centres together with commercial companies) the four studied sites (including four of the EU coastal observatories with a better and longer set of data) and end users (encompassing the large variety of economic sectors with presence or interests in the coastal zone).
Project results:
Due to the limitation to include figures through this application, this section has been reported in the enclosed file named:
'FIELD_AC_Final_Report_D6_4_V1.pdf'
Potential impact:
Due to the limitation to include figures through this application, this section has been reported in the enclosed file named:
'FIELD_AC_Final_Report_D6_4_V1.pdf'
List of websites: http://www.fieldac.eu
