Building a Next Generation Marine Modeling System

Abstract

Weather is becoming more extreme due to climate change (Pachauri and Meyer, 2014). Not only does violent weather increase the risk on loss of life, but higher ambient conditions increase the cost of operations and maintenance. At the same time the travel costs of offshore operations are rising as deep-water projects and wind parks are placed further and further from shore. In addition, the Offshore Industry embraced digitalization strategies more broadly in the mid-2010s, driving the need for more flexible data access. For providers of metocean solutions, traditional capabilities supported by legacy model sourcing were clearly insufficient to meet the future requirements across the industry as well as the adjacent Offshore Renewables sector. At the same time the shipping industry is working on the bridge of the future. Vessel response algorithms require detailed information of the current and future conditions. An evaluation of the development and deployment of a new generation marine forecasting system is provided. From the onset, the objective was to develop a flexible, global, cloud-native metocean forecast and hindcast system that provides a significant leap in accuracy, near-shore capability, and accessibility. It should verify at least as good as its predecessor; despite that it preserves peaks and events unlike the previous system, and all metocean parameters must be consistent with one another. Once implemented, it would provide operational metocean forecasts with global coverage with minimum spatial resolution of 6 minutes (0.1deg).