Nowcast Forescast Systems in Support of Safer Navigation

Abstract

The safe navigation both at sea and in harbour operations requires the early warning of potential hazards that can endanger the personnel at sea or jeopardize the efficient loading/unloading operations inside ports. Timely hazard and environmental conditions forecasting is an essential part of risk management for harbour and ship operations, providing the necessary information for safe and economically efficient navigation and harbour management.Forecasting information systems have been under development for ever three decades, addressing many problems and spanning several areas such as wind, wave and tidal prediction.Forecast systems combine our ability to measure and to simulate the behavior of water bodies, by integrating numerical models, monitoring networks and information technology systems, to provide real-time,short-term,predictions of the main drivers for safe navigation and harbour operations.With the recent emergence of new,reliable and cost-effective automatic data acquisition and highly efficient, reliable numerical models(Baptista,2006), most important constraints for widespread operational use of oceanographic models in real-time forecasting have been minimized.In particular, nowcast-forecast systems have evolved from research tools to operational tools for the management of harbors, marine resources and emergency operations, providing accurate and timely information on waves and currents conditions.