"Scientific and technological transfer platform for operational oceanography, vector for security increase in western Black Sea" (SOCOP)

National oceanography has long lasting tradition and the results led to the adherence of Romania in 1961 at the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC)-UNESCO.The concentration in this field was achieved in 1970 when Romanian Institute of Marine Research was founded. Later on, it became National Institute for Marine Research and Development Grigore Antipa(HG 686 from 23.08.1999). Starting in 1989, oceanographic research was developed in other institutions as well, who started to developed their own programs. Operational oceanography requires oceanographic data acquisition and transfer in real time and quasi-real time, becoming nowadays a classic methodology in many countries. NIMRD was involved in this kind of experiments. The aim of this project is to put the bases of a scientific platform and technological transfer in operational oceanography by integration of the national institutes with the same field of research. Complex structure created will allow rehabilitation of the acquisition system, data archive and analysis and oceanographic data transfer from marine environment to meteorological-oceanographic centres. The integrated system supposes the association and then the design of a common network of stations, observational points, and a standard common methodology adoption, evaluation of the existing equipment (converter-network) and replacement of them if necessary. That will imply that in subsidiary a database should be created, data quality control, modeling and creating different types of meteorological-oceanographic products: short, medium and long term forecasting, digit maps up-to-date and on material support, informative bulletins on the evolution of some significant environmental parameters. With these components the project answers of the end-users requirements, realizing a continuous dialog with them.

The integrative Platform will facilitate the integration in similar European structures developing the existing infrastructure and human resources and will support the scientific decisions in environmental management, reduce the hazards generated by extreme events (surges, tsunamis) and will promote sustainable development of the marine services and products. The Platform gives the opportunity to better valuate the national experience gained during the development of joint regional and international Programs.

The beginnings of the national operational oceanography dates back in 1983-1986, when Romanian Institute foe Marine Research (nowadays NIMRD "Grigore Antipa") installed at Constanta, at ten meters depth and one nautical mile offshore, an oceanographic platform for data in-situ aquisition and cable transmission to the shore. Wave parameters and meteorological data werw transmitted as well.

In 1999, NIMRD to joined the international Programe MedGLOSS (Mediterranean Network for Systematic Sea-level Monitoring in the Mediterranean and Black Seas - regional subsystem of Global Sea Level Observing System), initiated and supported by International Comission for Scientific Exploration of Mediterranean Sea (CIESM) and Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commision (IOC). In within this Programme, the first operational oceanographic equipment was installed in Constantza Port. Data were hourly transmitted via dial-up to the Institute and after archiving and processing they were sent to Institute of Oceanology from Israel, the coordinator of the Project.

Since 2002, NIMRD is member of the European Service for Sea Level (ESEAS). The service was settled as a follow-up of the ESEAS -RI Project funded by EU. The main objectives of the Project were the rehabilitation and densification of the operational sea level stations in Europe and future connection with GLOSS (Global Ocean Observing System). Following the tsunamis events in December 2005, the members of the European Service for Sea Level (NIMRD included), submitted recently a new Project to EU, regarding a future Sea Level Hazards, aiming at the prevention of extreme events in European seas using operational oceanography. As responsible for national sea level network NIMRD installed a Thalimedes shaft -encoder at Sulina, able to transmit data in real time, but dedicated transmission equipment (VOTA) is required.

In 2003. National Administration of Meteorology started the guvernmental Programe SIMIN (Romanian National Integrated Meteorologic System), which has an operational component for oceanography. This component was given in care to Hidrographic Marine Directorate (HMD) from Constantza, but due to some dysfunctions it is not available. In the same Programe, three sea level recorders, Aandera type, with data transmission through GSM were installed at Romanian coast.

GEOECOMAR is the administrator of a station in Mangalia, which records wave energy, potentially useful for the actual Project.

Data obtained in within these separate networks, gave the opportunity of approaching two main directions:

- scientific research, where studies on the long term tendency of the oceanographic parameters were analyzed, their interaction and long term tendency, in connection with the entire scientific community from the Black Sea coastal countries and World Ocean;

-applicative research, when different studies were elaborated function of the beneficiary demands, such as National Office for Cadastre and Geodesy, NC Maritime Harbours Administration, Rompetrol, Ministery of the Environment or international companies such as Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). These are among the potential users of our future collaborative work.

Internationally, operational oceanography developed as the need of the modellers to handle updated, real-time data to produce accurate nowcasts and forecasts. One can not run a model in the absence of large volume of oceanographic data.

In the Black Sea basin, the six coastal countries, Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russian Federation, Ukraine and Turkey developed jointly different Programs, such as "NATO Tu Black Sea Project and nowadays two Projects funded by European Union : " A Regional Capoacity Building and Networking Programme to Upgrade Monitoring and Forecasting Activity in the Black Sea Basin" (ARENA) and " A Supporting Programme for Capacity Building in the Black Sea Region Towards Operational Status of Oceanographic Services" (ASCABOS). Both Programs are aiming at the strengthening of the institutional capacity in the region and the development of the operational oceanography. It is worth to mention that both of them are user oriented Projects.

A)

• Scientific foundation of the decisional capacity regarding the activities connected with marine and coastal environment;

• Insure the sustainable development conditions of the possibilities of turning to account the services and goods offered by marine environment;

• Mitigation economically, socially and environmentally the risks generated by extreme events and hazards, in the condition of their frequency and magnitude increase.

In the same time, the Project has certain specific objectives:

B)

• Strengthening the logistic capacity expertise and performance of the national institutes involved in operational oceanography;

• Achievement of an integrative Platform of the national capacities, to reach the operational status of the operational oceanography;

• Set -up of an operational technological transfer of oceanographic data and products to the end-users;

• Turning to account the experience gained by joint activity in regional and international projects already finished or in development

In this respect improvement of the communication and of the facilities are required to fulfil the monitoring, scientific analysis, modelling and forecast the processes in the marine environment.

Scientific and technological transfer Platform that would be settled during the Project, would be a first step in definition and unification of the national operational system for monitoring and forecast.

As previously underlined, basic elements are improved communication system and data exchange in a well defined network.

A second step will be the phenomenological approach of the processes governing the marine dynamics, their scale and interactions. Operative efficiency involves the design and construction of an initial, local, forcasting model, developing an operational system capable to assimilate near-real time data. This involves further development of models able to assimilate data.

Available operational equipment is concentrated in NIMRD "Grigore Antipa" and Maritime Hidrographic Directorate consisting of sea level recorders, Paroscientific type, Aandera type and Thalimedes shaft-encoder attached to a R20 OTT sea level recorder (on Sulina branch of the Danube), next to the meteorological station Sulina). Data are transmitted hourly via Dial-up or Internet and in delayed mode through GSM. A wave station is managed by GEOECOMAR. The oceanographic data buoys that were deployed during SIMIN project do not correspond to the requirements of the actual Project.

The Project is aiming at the redefinition and densification of the network, which will have the following proposed structure:

-meteo-oceanographic data buoys deployed near the coast, data transmission in near-real time. Data on wave elements and sea currents will be thus recorded and transmitted;

-small automatic meteorological station to be installed in the sea level recorders location, to ensure the complete data set required for a GLOSS station.

Connection with National Meteorological Network will be established, to achieve the integration of the oceanographic network into the national meteorological one.

Environmental problems of the Black Sea are affecting the entire basin and they can not be approached by a single country due the transboundary nature of the pollutants and sediment transport and the wave field distribution and propagation is poorly known, generating less reliable forecasts. Therefore, the Platform will strengthen the links with similar institutions from the Black Sea countries, aiming at foundation of an oceanographical observational transnational network, oceanographic products becoming more accurate and complex. This in turn will increase the national expertise capacity, generating high quality products devoted for the end users.

On the national scale, the dissipation of the oceanographic activities among institution subordinated to different Ministries, high costs of the research vessels exploitation determined a slower progress in this field having not the expected results. Even if European Union or NATO supported different Programes in the area, there is still much to be done. A weak point to be taken into consideration was the insufficient communication/collaboration between the specialized institutions, not to mention the lack of a permanent contact with the potential, existing end users.

Actually, on the national level a network for acquiring, archiving, processing and transfer of the oceanographic data does not exist, even if there are sparse institutions which produce such kind of data. An institutional system to unitary manage the preoccupations in the field of operational oceanography does not exist either nor a network of evaluation and transfer between data producers and end users.

Having in mind the existence of data producers and end users needs and requirements, the Project intends to fill the existing gaps by approaching two main directions:

1) modernization of the existing acquisition and transfer equipment for meteo-oceanographic data;

2). integration of the institutions specialized in oceanography, including University of Bucharest, which is both producer and user of the oceanographic data and products.

The resulting entity, in the form of the Scientific and Technological Transfer Platform, will increase the expertise capacity of each partner institution, allowing for complex interdisciplinary researches that can be approached during the Project development, as a part of product dissemination activities.

Oceanographic products end - users, with whom the partner institution have already been worked, will have the opportunity to benefit of higher quality, more complex products. Moreover, the Platform stands for future common projects that will make it self sustainable.

In order to achieve the proposed objectives, the activities will be grouped in the following thematic directions (stages):

1. Capacity assessment of the actual and potential oceanographic data producers and the identification of the way to improve the scientific connections between Romanian specialized institutions.

This stage implies two components:

a) identification of the data producers and end users needs and requirements at national level;

b) identification of the data producers and end users needs and requirements at international level;

An inventory of the existing metadata base will be accomplished and possibilities to interrelate them will be explored. NIMRD, the responsible institute for Networking and Mending in the international project ARENA, is managing an archive Server, devoted for such an operation. The new archive may be interrelated with the data managed in the ARENA and ASCABOS Projects, having as a result a correlation of the national Platform with the Black Sea entire network, as a next step in foundation of an international, operative, scientific one.

Structure of the existing data bases will be identified and their possible intercorelation will be explored. This will be done through network archive server located in NIMRD, which is the archive server for the ARENA and ASCABOS network as well. This way, national Platform will be connected with the entire Black Sea network, giving the opportunity to settle an international scientific operational one.

Basic parameters of the environment will be taken into consideration, which next to the actual ones, could be physically measured and recorded, the necessary sensors, their location into the network, data bases.

2. Assessment of the scientific and technological needs of the data producers and end users of oceanographic products and creation of a data base.

To approach this issue difference between scientific needs and technological facilities will be taken into consideration. These are different between partners and a careful assessment must be done for the end users in order to manage the data fluxes and final products transfer.

Therefore, in order to receive a quasi-real time forecast the user should have minimal equipment devoted to that, function of the degree of interest. This supposes the accurate evaluation of the Platform capacity to integrate a network of exiting computers, evaluation of the data fluxes (rates, volume, speed and frequency), transfer protocols, leading finally to set up a reliable network for managing, and data transfer in the operational way.

Different oceanographic data are stored in the in sparse files in the afore mentioned institutions. Some other data were stored collected by the Naval Authority in Constantza Port (sea currents, waves). A recovery of these data sets will be done and a new data base will be set up, using the current and archived data.

It is worth to notice that there are important potential users of the Platform, most relevant being the Secretariat of the National System for Intervention in Cases of Oil Pollution, National Committee of the Coastal Zone, Maritime Harbors Administration, Ministry of the Environment and Waters, etc.

3. Strengthening of the expertise capacity of the institutions involved in national Platform

Further approach after the assessment of the scientific abilities and requirements will lead us forward to the establishment of the prioritary fields, that require a special attention. Special attention will be paid to:

-acquisition of specific measurement equipments, archiving and data transfer in near-real time among the partners and between partners and end-users, function of their needs and concern.

- training of the personnel with abilities in the field and training of the end users, where necessary, to for taking over the final products

-implementation of the methodology and assimilated equipment in conformity with the international standards, for the future integration in the European network.

- Strengthening of the capacity to assimilate data and models, special soft acquisition where necessary and development of the existing ones.

4. Technological transfer for harmonization of the Platform capacities to unitary respond to the operational oceanography and dissemination to the end-users.

- establishment of the exchange of oceanographic data and products;

-establishment of the transfer protocols to the end-users and assistance whenever required;

- dissemination of the results through a workshop, guides or manuals.

- applications and simulations in different cases.

- system management and identification of new capacities to keep the Platform alive after the end of the Project.

5. Elaboration of the terms of Reference for the National Oceanographic Data Centre.

Scientific and technological transfer Platform, by integrating the specialized institutions creates the pre-requisites for the foundation the National Oceanographic Data Centre (NODC). Basic activity of an NODC is to manage oceanographic data acquisition, QC, processing, archiving and dissemination. Data are collected freely from the researches, which produced them in different Projects and thus the Centre concentrates the national oceanography data dissipated in different Institutes or Universities,

A NODC should provide:

• Copies of yhe received data or parts of them in the format they were receive;

• Inventories of the stored data giving opportunity to the users to select dat they are interested of;

• To provide enough information about data making the user confident in their value;

• To join the international data exchange.

Therefore in agreement with the partners in the Project, ToR for NODC will be elaborated.

Project results will be the following:

a)set-up of the first national Scientific and Technological Transfer Platform in the field of the operational oceanography by integration of the specialized institutions;

b) strengthening the capacity building and expertise abilities of the participants by acquiring proper equipment and personell training ;

c) set-up of a minimal network in the field of national operational oceanography;

d) data exchange, data base and oceanographic products: forecast, maps, guides, manuals, etc.

e) dissemination of the results to the end users;

f) taking into account the parameters used in operational oceanography, the final products in the form of forecast or maps are useful to improve navigation conditions, forecast of the oil spills tracks to reduce the intervention time, basic knowledge of the marine ecosystem abiotic component evolution.;

g) risks evaluation for extreme events;

h)basis for the feasibility study for National Oceanographic Data Centre.

Operational oceanography requires continuous and accurate measurements of the environment parameters. This gives the choice to record timely the negative deviations and to act properly.

Evolution of the phisical factors affecting the marine environment is crucial for the coastal zone managers and decision-makers. Coastal zone dynamics cannot be understood without a proper understanding of the wave and current regime or the sea level evolution, which determines the coastline position.

Therefore we consider that the Platform will respond to the socio-economic and environmental challenges promoting the sustainable development of that coastal area through:

- promote the durability of the economic development

-ensure of a equitable balance between resources valuation and ecosystem sustainability;

-mitigation measures to reduce the risks generated by the extreme phenomena;

- economic and social stability in the coastal area.

The Platform will concentrate institutions already involved in some aspects of the operational oceanography, but with different profiles and subordination. Therefore each participant evaluated its resources and necessities, following a common strategy. For that, the following will be taken into consideration:

-permanent communication between project coordinator and the partners;

- set-up different working groups devoted to specific themes: IT, procurement of the equipment or data acquisition;

- end user involvement in a continuous dialog to be able to respond to their needs.

All these sort of activities will be supervised in a Coordination Committee, which will include the Directors of the partners Institutions and end users ones.

Researches involved in the Project are specialized in oceanography, due to the nature of the institutions they represent.

NIMRD, responsible for the project has experience in this field due to the involvement in the afore mentioned programmes dealing with operational oceanography (MedGLOSS, ESEAS, ARENA, ASCABOS). NIMRD is already involved in operational oceanography and it does manage specific equipment. Hidrographic Maritime Directorate has a Department specialized in oceanography and a Meteorological Department too, both of them having experience in operational oceanography. GEOECOMAR has specialized personnel and is managing a station for wave energy recording that might be useful for the Project. University from Bucharest is involved through Oceanography Department and is managing the Station for Oceanographic Research at Sf. Gheorghe in Danube Delta.