Renaissance Computing Institute

SURA Coastal Ocean Observing and Prediction Program(SCOOP)

Overview

SURA's Southeastern Coastal Ocean Observing and Prediction Program (SCOOP) is creating an open-access network of distributed sensors and a grid environment for the southeastern coastal zone. This SURA initiative supports the national agenda to establish an integrated, sustained ocean observing system. The primary goal is to implement a comprehensive observing system that will validate short-term and long-term predictions in an accurate and timely manner. These predictions will guide coastal stewardship, enable planning for extreme events, facilitate safe and efficient maritime operations, and support coastal military security. The network will provide simultaneous measurements of winds, waves, currents, water density, nutrients, water quality, biological indices and fish stocks under all conditions. Open access to basic and analyzed data and linked numerical models will be available in real-time and at high-speed through a portal interface.

At RENCI, we have developed a grid computing-based, distributed system for the real-time computation of tidal and storm- driven water levels along the US East and Gulf coasts. Storm surge modeling requires assembling input meteorological data sets, running hydrodynamic models, comparing outputs with collected measurements and distributing the resulting information. The models may be run either after the fact (`hindcast' mode) for flood protection design projects or risk assessment, or in `forecast' mode for evacuation or operational decisions. The hindcast mode run is accessible through an Open Grid Computing Environment (OGCE) portal interface, enabling model execution utilizing a grid computing environment. Our ADCIRC grid leverages archived data from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as well as a distributed set of resources across the SCOOP Grid. The data archive of ocean observing data from the last few years is available on UNC Chapel Hill computing systems.

Publications

Phillip Bogden, Gabrielle Allen, Greg Stone, Joanne Bintz, Hans Graber, Sara Graves, Rick Luettich, Dan Reed, Peter Sheng, Harry Wang and Wei Zhao "The Southeastern University Research Association Coastal Ocean Observing and Prediction Program: Integrating Marine Science and Information Technology" MTS/IEEE Oceans 2005, Washington D.C., September 18-23, 2005

Presentations

Scoop Version 2 Meeting, Portland Maine, August 4-5 2005

About

Partners

The Scoop project is a collaborative effort among the following partners:

The Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System
Louisiana State University
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The Southeastern Universities Research Association
Texas A&M University
University of Alabama, Huntsville
University of Florida
University of Maryland
University of Miami
MCNC
Virginia Institute of Marine Science

Other Links

The public SCOOP Wiki contains more details about this project.
SCOOP project at SURA.

Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Commerce/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Award No. NA04NOS4730254.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Commerce/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.