Newletter
February 2006
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Wind power is much more than the gentle breeze that causes trees to sway or waves to move across a lake. The power in wind can push trucks off roads and flatten buildings, but it can also be harnessed to be a non-polluting, never-ending source of energy to meet electric power needs around the world. Using wind energy has a long history. In China and Egypt, archeologists have found "windmills" dating as far back as 500 BC, and nearly 20% of Denmark's electricity is currently generated by wind power. Wind resources in the U.S. are vast; yet less than 1% of its electricity is supplied by wind power. Using today's technology there is theoretically enough wind power to supply all electricity needs (American Wind Energy Association, http://www.awea.org/). As part of the growth of the U.S.'s use of wind resources, Energy Management Inc. (EMI) proposed the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts. |
 Offshore wind turbine in Denmark, photo courtesy of EMI. |
 Location of Cape Wind project (red circles represent the WTGs, blue lines are the WTG connecting cables, thick black line is the main power cable). |
The Cape Wind project is a proposed wind park offshore from Cape Cod which will use advanced wind turbines to generate electricity. The Cape Wind project is the first offshore wind park in the U.S. and is planned to be built on Horseshoe Shoal, five miles off the Cape Cod shore in Nantucket Sound. The wind park will consist of 130 wind turbine generators (WTG) with a total maximum output of 420 megawatts. On average, the wind park will produce enough electricity to power three-quarters of the Cape and Islands. |
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As part of the permitting process for the wind park an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was required to assesses potential environmental effects. ASA performed several environmental analyses to be incorporated in the final EIS.
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One of the great difficulties with ocean and climate data is the huge variety of hardware, software, and data that needs to be integrated for researchers, scientists, and responders to effectively use the data. ASA has been researching the use of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards as an open standard for sharing data across domains and technologies.
The COASTMAP Server displays oceanographic and meteorological data to a web browser client. The Timeslider allows the user to step through time. |
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We have focused primarily on the OGC WEB Map Service (WMS). WMS is defined as a service that "produces maps of spatially referenced data dynamically from geographic information." Accordingly, WMS has been used for many years as a standard to publish traditional static geographic data such as land features, infrastructure and data widely used in GIS applications. The challenge we faced was to use WMS to share time-varying data from observation systems and computer models, data that is a combination of time series data, gridded data, and unstructured data. The ability to allow for Time is essential and the OGC added the Time specification to the WMS standard to make this possible. Subsequently, we have been able to build COASTMAP WMS servers that publish environmental data such as meteorological and oceanographic data. This data is stored in a variety of formats, many use common formats such as NetCDF and GRIB, although there are many other formats. The COASTMAP WMS servers generate the map directly from NetCDF, GRIB and other data served by OPeNDAP servers. Now that these map services are published with an open standard, they may be consumed by many different client applications. Below are 3 examples of how WMS was used to share data are shown. |
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An ArcGIS client running the OILMAP extension connected to a WMS server. |
The NASA
World Wind application displaying
data from the COASTMAP WMS Server.|
The biggest challenge facing users of emergency response models such as OILMAP and SARMAP is the availability of high quality environmental data. The accuracy of the trajectory is highly dependent on the quality of the surface currents and winds that are used for the simulation. The rapid evolution of operational modeling and observation data allows emergency response users to automatically connect to data in regions where data is available from on-line servers. One of these high quality sources is Nowcasting International and a link between OILMAP/SARMAP V6.0 and Nowcasting's high speed data server allows users to automatically use real-time current and weather forecasted data. The integration of these services means that the first responders have access to a fully functional model and response planning tool within moments of receiving details of an incident. |
Oil spill trajectory prediction, using the link to Nowcasting's wind and current forcasts in OILMAP V6.0. |
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Nowcasting International Ltd. (www.nowcastinginternational.com) has been providing high resolution data to the oil industry, Coast Guards and Navies in the North Sea, Mediterranean Gulf of Mexico, Sakhalin Island and West Africa since 1999. "Nowcasting specializes in delivering high quality metocean data and tools to our customers," says Mark White, CEO of Nowcasting International, "and the linkage of ASA's prediction models is an excellent match, allowing critical decisions to be made in a time effective manner." |
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The University of Miami (RSMAS) is using the Coastmap NetCDF extension to visualize the results of the HYCOM/MICOM model in ArcGIS. This allows Umiami researchers to use ArcGIS to visualize the NetCDF-format model results directly, including animation of time steps and time series analysis for selected grid cells. The COASTMAP and TimeSlider extensions are also being used to visualize dispersal of larval fish relative to oceanographic features, such as currents and fronts. |
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Version 6.0 of OILMAP and SARMAP will be available in the 2nd quarter of 2006. New features include:
José Edson Pereira and Ronaldo Palmeira presented the paper "Operational Modeling and Forecasting System in Campos Basin" at the VI Seminar on Waves, Tides, Oceanic Engineering, and Remote Sensing held 3-13 September in Arraial do Cabo (Rio de Janeiro). The seminar was organized by IEAPM (Instituto de Estudos do Mar Almirante Paulo Moreira). Ann Borowik attended a two-day training session: Introduction to ArcIMS held 10-11 October in Danvers, MA. ASA performed oil spill fate and effects modeling and analysis to evaluate the impacts and cost implications of spill response options being considered by the Washington State Department of Ecology (WDOE) in their rulemaking related to oil spill preparedness (WA State Contingency Plan Rule). On 11-13 October Deborah French McCay presented modeling results to WDOE and Stakeholders reviewing the process in Olympia, WA. |
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In October, Ana Carolina Lammardo delivered BMA's project for Modeling Dispersion and Deposition of Dredged Material Discharged in Salvador (Bahia, Brazil). BMA (Biomonitoramento e Meio Ambiente Ltda) has been a partner of ASA South America for modeling studies in northeast Brazil since 2003. |
 Ana Carolina and Fátima Navarro, Director of BMA, in Salvador, BA |
 Jay Hsu, Kuo-Tung Chang, Eric Anderson, Iris Ying (Hung-Huei), Leo Chiu (Chi-Min), John Chang (Mong-Chir), and Christine Peng (Hsien-Ya) in front of the golden dragon on the National Kaohsiung Marine University campus |
Eric Anderson visited with Prof. Kuo-Tung Chang of the National Kaohsiung Marine University in Kaohsiung, Taiwan in October. Prof. Chang is using ASA's OILMAP and WQMAP software as part of the course work for advanced undergraduates. Eric briefly addressed those classes using ASA's software. He and Prof. Chang also visited with Taiwan EPA officials in Taipei, and with Chinese Petroleum Corporation personnel in Kaohsiung. |
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Eoin Howlett attended OOSTECH 2005, a workshop to discuss "Web Services for Interoperable Ocean Science", 24-26 October, in Baltimore, MD. Eoin presented a paper discussing the integration of open-source and commercial technologies to address issues related to integration of ocean observing and model data. The 9th International Estuarine and Coastal Modeling conference was held in Charleston, SC, 31 October - 2 November. Craig Swanson presented "Application of Lagrangian-based Transport Model Run Backward to Estimate Pollutant Source Locations at Southport Harbor, Connecticut" focusing on using ASA's oil spill modeling technology for different types of pollution. Craig also chaired a session on Nowcast / Forecast Systems. Eduardo Yassuda presented the paper "Development of an Operational Met-Ocean Modeling System, with applications in South America". |
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Eoin Howlett and Matthew Ward represented ASA at Grumman Corporation's suppliers' excellence award dinner in Reston, VA on 8 November. The award recognized ASA as a supplier who contributed substantively to Northrop Grumman's success through their technical capability and commitment to producing quality products and services. |
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Ann Borowik attended the "ESRI-Boston GIS Solutions Expo" on 8 November in Boston, MA. Eric Anderson was a speaker at the Clean Gulf 2005 conference held 9-10 November in Galveston, TX. His presentation covered the critical importance of environmental data (winds and currents) in achieving good predictions in oil spill modeling work. Examples of real time buoy winds in the Galveston area, combined with predictions from several forecast data sources and methods for downloading/displaying these data were shown. He also discussed the definition of data quality measures for wind and current data. Deborah French McCay presented "Probabilistic Consequence Analysis for Dispersant Use on Oil Spills" (by Deborah French-McCay, Nicole Whittier, and Jill Rowe of ASA and Don Aurand of Ecosystem Management & Associates) at the 26th Annual Meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC), 13 - 17 November 2005, in Baltimore, MD. This modeling study quantified the trade-offs between water-column resource and wildlife/shoreline impacts resulting from dispersant use that may be used in decision making, contingency planning and ecological risk assessments. |
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In November, Nicole Whittier taught a 4-day OILMAP training course for Oil Spill Response Limited (OSRL). The course covered both the basics and numerous special features of OILMAP. Based in Southampton, England, OSRL is the world's largest international oil spill response provider and is wholly owned by 26 of the most responsible and environmentally committed oil companies. OSRL uses OILMAP, as well as other oil spill modeling systems, in support of their consultancy, training and emergency response services. |
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During November, Marc Zapata and Scott Langtry (APASA WA) completed customization and delivery of SARMAP to the Western Australian Marine Rescue Co-ordination Centre, operated by the WA Water Police. The system provides search and rescue capabilities over all waters off Western Australia, integrating output from the HYDROMAP circulation model, large scale current data derived from satellite altimetry, and output of a meteorological model. Formal training was provided to the first contingent of seven offices and ongoing support was provided to a number of rescue missions. |
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6-8 December Eoin Howlett and José Edson Pereira attended the 9th HYCOM (HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model) Consortium Meeting at RSMAS, University of Miami, FL. The meeting focused on the status of ocean modeling using HYCOM, under GODAE (U. S. Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment) ideas. Global, regional and local hydrodynamic simulations, data assimilation, modeling developments and data management services were discussed. ASA's numerical models and solutions to couple global, meso and small scale projects complement the goals of the GODAE program. |
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Eoin Howlett and Malcolm Spaulding participated in a meeting at NOAA's Silver Spring, MD offices on 15 December. ASA and Northrop Grumman presented the latest developments on an IOOS (Integrated Ocean Observing System) demonstration project to senior NOAA management. |
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Scott Langtry provided an overview of modeling efforts undertaken by Asia Pacific ASA and Worley Parsons to investigate environmental consequences of a proposed solar salt farm to community representatives of Exmouth, a coastal township on Exmouth Gulf. Results were presented on a regional circulation model for Exmouth Gulf, tidal inundation modeling over the east coast of the Gulf where development is proposed, dispersion of bitterns discharges into the Gulf, and the fate of sediments suspended by dredging. |
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Christopher Mueller has joined ASA as a biologist and GIS analyst. Christopher received his BS in Marine Biology in 2001 from the University of Rhode Island and will be completing his MS in Biological Oceanography from URI's Graduate School of Oceanography this spring. At ASA Chris will be applying his extensive GIS skills and providing biological science support for various ASA projects. |
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Eric Comerma has joined ASA as a senior researcher. A native of Spain, Eric received his PhD in Ocean Engineering in 2004 from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Barcelona, Spain). He has been involved in several research projects in Operational Oceanography in Europe, working with various French and Spanish agencies (e.g., MetoFrance and CEDRE) related with marine forecast, contingency planning and water quality. Eric will focus on metocean data integration projects, model based services work, and R&D projects. |
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Oceanographer Rafael Bonanata da Rocha is returning to ASA South America after receiving a M.Sc. in Coastal Management from the University of Cantabria in Spain (2005), working with wave modeling for port and harbor applications. |
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Felipe Palmeira, meteorologist, recently joined ASA South America. He will be involved with the ongoing operational modeling project with PETROBRAS. |
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