OPENCoastS

The OPENCoastS service is available for use in: https://opencoasts.ncg.ingrid.pt/.

The users manual is available here.

The service can also be installed in a user-selected infrastructure. The OPENCoastS's service code was released in a public repository: https://gitlab.com/opencoasts/eosc-hub

The use of the service is freely available, but a registration is needed at this site.

See:

- a hands-on demo on the OPENCoastS platform.

- a presentation on the platform.

A hands-on course was given at the IMUM 2018 workshop. Materials from the course are provided in the Dissemination section.

An e-tutorial on OPENCoastS was given in the 13rd of december onsite, by videoconferencing and by webstreaming. See the Dissemination section for the recorded classes.

For more information, please contact Anabela Oliveira (aoliveira@lnec.pt).

A. Oliveira, A.B. Fortunato, M. Rodrigues, A. Azevedo, J. Rogeiro, S. Bernardo, L. Lavaud, X. Bertin, A. Nahon, G. Jesus, M. Rocha, P. Lopes, 2021. Forecasting contrasting coastal and estuarine hydrodynamics with OPENCoastS, Environmental Modelling & Software, Volume 143,105132, ISSN 1364-8152, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2021.105132.

A. Oliveira, A.B. Fortunato, J. Rogeiro, J. Teixeira, A. Azevedo, L. Lavaud, X. Bertin, J. Gomes, M. David, J. Pina, M. Rodrigues, P. Lopes, 2019. OPENCoastS: An open-access service for the automatic generation of coastal forecast systems, Environmental Modelling & Software, Volume 124, 104585, ISSN 1364-8152, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2019.104585.

Oliveira A.; Rodrigues, M.; Rogeiro, J.; Fortunato, A. B.; Teixeira, J.; Azevedo, A.; Lopes, P. (2019) OPENCoastS: An Open-Access App for Sharing Coastal Prediction Information for Management and Recreation. In: Rodrigues J. et al. (eds) Computational Science – ICCS 2019. ICCS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11540. Springer, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2019.104585

OPENCoastS: on-Demand Forecast Tool for Management, Marta Rodrigues, João Rogeiro, Samuel Bernardo, Anabela Oliveira, André B. Fortunato, Joana Teixeira, Pedro Lopes, Alberto Azevedo, Jorge Gomes, Mário David, João Pina, in Proccedings of the Fourteenth International MEDCOAST Congress on Coastal and Marine Sciences, Engineering Management and Conservation MEDCOAST 2019, 22-26 October 2019, Marmaris, turkey, ISBN: 978-605-69747-0-0

A. Azevedo, A.B. Fortunato, J. Teixeira, J. Rogeiro, A. Oliveira, M. Rodrigues, J. Gomes, M. David e J. Pina (2018). OPENCoastS.pt – Serviço de previsão em tempo real a pedido para a circulação na ZEE portuguesa, Atas das 5as Jornadas de Engenharia Hidrográfica, I.H. (eds), 105-108.

A.B. Fortunato, A. Oliveira, J. Rogeiro, J. Teixeira, A. Azevedo, J. Gomes, M. David, J. Pina, 2018. Generation of operational forecasts on demand: the OPENCoastS platform, 17thIMUM Book of Abstracts, http://imum2018.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/user_upload/imum2018/template/img/Book_of_Abstracts_revised.pdf

João Rico, José Barateiro, António Silva, João Rogeiro, Alberto Azevedo, Anabela Oliveira - "Digital preservation challenges and methodology using Cloud resources - the OPENCoastS case study", EUDAT Conference - Putting the EOSC vision into practice, 1 pp, https://eudat.eu/eudat-conference-posters-0#23.

Teixeira, J., Fortunato, A. B., Rogeiro, J., Azevedo, A., Rodrigues, M., Oliveira, A. (2018). Previsão em tempo real a pedido na costa portuguesa - O serviço opencoasts.pt e sua demonstração na circulação da Ria Formosa. Atas do 14º Congresso da água -Gestão dos Recursos Hidricos:Novos Desafios, 16 pp.

Teixeira, J.; Rogeiro, J.; Oliveira, A.; Fortunato, A. B.; Azevedo, A.; Rodrigues, M.; Gomes, J.; David, M. (2017). OpencoastS.pt – serviço de previsão em tempo real a pedido para a circulação e agitação maritima na costa portuguesa, Atas das 9ªs Jornadas Portuguesas de Engenharia Costeira e Portuária, 19 pp.

OVERVIEW

Forecast systems are fundamental components of emergency response and routine management of coastal regions. They provide coastal managers and all entities that have responsibilities on the coast with accurate and timely predictions on water conditions (e.g., water levels and velocities, wave characteristics), supporting multiple uses such as navigation, water monitoring, port operations, dredging works and construction activities on the coast. Simultaneously, they are an indispensable tool for emergency agents and civil protection authorities by anticipating natural disasters (e.g., floods, storm surges and algae blooms), predicting the impacts of anthropogenic accidents in the coast (e.g. oil and chemical spills) and helping in search and rescue operations. For over 10 years LNEC has been developing and deploying a forecast framework, denoted WIFF – Water Information Forecast Framework, applicable from the ocean to the hydrographic basin, including the urban interface.

However, the development of forecast systems requires not only a strong knowledge of coastal processes but also of information technology, along with access to significant computational and storage resources. The setup and maintenance of these systems constitutes therefore a major difficulty for many coastal research groups. Before the EOSC-Hub H2020 project, services for generic deployment of forecast frameworks at user-specified locations were not yet available.

To overcome this limitation, LNEC, LIP, CNRS/LR and UC have developed the OPENCoastS service which builds on-demand circulation forecast systems for user-selected sections of the coast and maintain them running operationally for the timeframe defined by the user. This daily service generates forecasts of water levels and 2D velocities (and wave parameters in the near future) over the spatial region of interest for periods of 48 hours, based on numerical simulations of all relevant physical processes. Presently, all forecasts are made with the model SCHISM (http://ccrm.vims.edu/schismweb/).

CONCEPT AND ARQUITECTURE
Goals and requirements for the forecast on-demand service include:

- it should be accessible through a simple Web interface with both users manual and a hands-on demo available;

- it should be flexible, in the choice of the model, forcings and domain of application;

- it should be modular and allow fast updates on models, integration of new forcings. It should also allow fast replication of a on-going deployment to new parametrizations or new choices of forcings, without building form scratch;

- it should provide authomatic comparison with available on-line data on the domain of choice, to provide quality control and user trust on the simulations

- it should provide the possibility to share deployment results in an open way or to a restricted group of users to promote open data and joint research by several groups, and joint decision making by management authorities

The Architectureof the service, including both frontend and backend is shown here:

Fig 1. Architecture of OPENCoastS service

COMPONENTS OF OPENCOASTS

Fig 2. OPENCoastS workflow

Presently, all forecasts in OPENCoastS are made with the model SCHISM (http://ccrm.vims.edu/schismweb/). SCHISM is an open-source community-supported
modelling system based on unstructured grids, designed for the seamless simulation of 3D baroclinic circulation across lake/river/estuary/shelf/ocean scales (Zhang et al., 2016).

OPENCoastS allows for a suite of forcing options and provides access to the forecast results through a simple viewer that comprises maps of forecasted variables and charts of model data comparison at monitoring stations as well as time series of model results at virtual sensors (e.g. locations selected by the user):

Fig 3. OPENCoastS platform: architecture and interfaces

OPENCoastS is supported by LNEC's real time forecast framework WIFF - Water Information Forecast Framework (http://ariel.lnec.pt). WIFF started to be developed at LNEC in 2007 for the 2D circulation at the Aveiro lagoon (Oliveira et al., 2010). It was expanded to short wave propagation in the North Atlantic and Portuguese coasts in 2010 (Ribeiro et al., 2010) and to coupled wave-current circulation in 2016 (Fortunato et al., 2017) as well as 3D baroclinic predictions (Rodrigues et al., 2016). It also includes the circulation and water quality due to urban discharges (David et al. 2015).

OPENCoastS is supported by the EGI computational resources, through project H2020 EOSC-Hub, being available as one of its thematic services (https://www.eosc-hub.eu/catalogue/OPENCoastS)

SOME EXAMPLES OF OPENCoastS