Operational Forecasts and
Emergency Services

Obtaining sea-state forecast is a challenging task, which requires a deep knowledge of the areas of numerical modeling, data collection and oceanographic analysis. Only with an efficient combination of these three areas, it is possible to obtain a reliable ocean forecast. PROOCEANO has been investing in training its team and in developing ocean modeling and data assimilation techniques to obtain accurate ocean forecasts. PROOCEANO has a wide range of applications already made in this area, at various scales (bays, estuaries, coastal and deep oceanic regions) in different locations along the globe.

The forecasts provided by PROOCEANO are extremely important for planning operations at sea, Search & Rescue operations and pollution control, among other activities.

Numerical Modeling

Main activity since its creation, PROOCEANO continually invests in the improvement of numerical simulations to understand and to predict the marine environment behavior, such as its currents, waves, tides or other elements that can influence it, as the pollutants. We use free and commercial models to simulate the wide range of phenomena and different regions of oceans and water bodies, such as Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS), SiSBahia, WaveWatch III, Swan, OSCAR and PARTRACK.

Data Collection

To obtain an understanding of the environment, extensive and systematic observation is necessary. PROOCEANO uses several technologies to observe and analyze the ocean. To collect ocean data, we use the state-of-the-art equipments, such as AUVs (Gliders), ARGO profilers, drifters, ADCPs, CTDs, XCPs, among others.

In the Remote Sensing area, as part of the CLS Group (a subsidiary of the French Space Agency), PROOCEANO has direct access to the most complete world dataset of Sea-Surface Height (SSH), Sea-Surface Temperature (SST), Sea Color, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR).

Environmental Risk Analysis

An innovative study and methodology developed by PROOCEANO, in association with AECOM, to analyze and quantify the environmental risk caused by an event of oil spill at sea.

It is necessary to calculate the operational risk, the results of oil dispersion modeling at sea and the identification of the environmental components and their recovery times. By joining these components it is posible to calculate an Environmental Risk value, and thus quantify this impact, minimizing the subjectivity usually employed in these analysis.

Data Analysis

Besides collecting meteoceanographic data, PROOCEANO count with an experienced team to analyze, generate results and interpret them. It could be data measured by any meteoceanographic equipment, numerical model data or remote sensing data. There are numerous varieties of data analyzed and interpreted by PROOCEANO, among them: currents, winds, altimetry, underwater acoustics; parameters such as temperature, salinity, density, dissolved oxygen; data from the most varied equipment such as gliders, drifters, profilers, current meters; etc.

PROOCEANO has years of experience in the preparation of reports of Physical Environment - Meteorology and Oceanography - for environmental licensing processes, which have contributed to the improvement of our data analysis techniques.