Application of a Monitoring and Modeling System to Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island Waters

Craig Swanson
Applied Science Associates, Inc
70 Dean Knauss Drive, Narragansett, RI 02882
401-789-6224
cswanson@appsci.com

Matthew Ward, Applied Science Associates, Inc.
Eoin Howlett, Applied Science Associates, Inc.
Malcolm Spaulding, Ocean Engineering, University of Rhode Island

COASTMAP is a globally relocatable, integrated system for real time monitoring, modeling and data distribution for shelf, coastal sea and estuarine waters. The system was recently tested as an operational prototype for Narragansett Bay and surrounding coastal waters (Southern New England Bight). Real time monitoring observations were acquired from NOAA PORTS, CO-OPS and NBDC systems, the USGS river gauging system and instruments deployed by the Universities of Rhode Island and Connecticut and the Narragansett Bay Commission. The system is designed to link with any type of time varying data, either as time series (deployed current meters or water quality instruments), as fields of information (CODAR surface currents) or as a series of images (weather satellite imagery). The data can be processed, archived in a database and distributed to COASTMAP clients to provide present, historical and forecast conditions. Forecast data was acquired automatically by COASTMAP from external sites such as the NOAA Coastal Ocean Forecast System (COFS) and the National Weather Service Extra-Tropical Storm Surge model (ETSS) and standard meteorological forecasts. The forecasting component integrates a hydrodynamic model that accesses necessary environmental data from the COASTMAP database for open boundary conditions, assimilation, and other related environmental conditions. Hindcast, nowcast and forecast simulations generated by the hydrodynamic and other process models were ingested by COASTMAP where they were integrated with the database and made available to other users and the public.

Keywords: monitoring system, computer model, real time data