Strategic Planning for Operational Oceanography
7
need to understand and predict climate and global environmental change still provides an intellectual and logicallink which holds GOOS together in the long term.
In the design of the observing system and data archiving, care must be taken to
ensure that the accuracy required for climate monitoring and prediction is guaranteed, even if it is a greater level of accuracy than that needed for the shorter term
services. Through the development of GOOS every coastal state should gain practical benefits for the management of its resources and marine environment, and in
the long term the threat of climate change will be detected at the earliest possible
moment. This aggregation process is analysed by Flemming (1999).
The renewed emphasis on the short-term economic benefits on a prediction
timescale of weeks to months and applications to many different industries does
not mean a return to the disparate problems of the early 1980s. The advance in
numerical modelling techniques for major ocean basins and the coastal shelf seas
has created a synthesising force which enables scientists, planners and data managers to integrate the sum of input data gathered from many different sources, and to
generate informative products which can be used by hundreds of different customers for different reasons. It is not easy to achieve this goal, but it is possible. Thus
observations of the physical parameters of the Atlantic will be used in numerical
models which, after the addition of some other data streams, may result in products
as diverse as flood warnings in the USA, estimates of fisheries stock migration on
the continental slopes off the west coast of Ireland, and prediction of dangerous
currents and internal waves threatening oiI platforms off the Niger delta. It is possible to use one on-going programme of, for example, sea surf ace temperature
measurements, to support the generation of data products with myriad applications.
GOOS therefore offers an attractively efficient way of reducing costs and maximising benefits for many customers.
When it become clear that the shorter term economic benefits provided the main
justification for GOOS, particularly in Europe where the ENSO effect is minimal,
it was then necessary to find a way of evaluating and summing the benefits which
would accrue to a wide range of maritime and coastal industries. In September
1993 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) convened an Experts Meeting ofthe Megascience Forum in Tokyo to discuss the economics of GOOS, and from this a book was published in August 1994 (OECD,
1994). The Megascience Forum established for the first time the approximate scale
of the aggregate of all maritime industries and services, and their contribution to
national and global GNP. Since 1993-4 several countries have set up national committees to develop policies and projects in support of GOOS, and analysis of the
benefits and economics of GOOS has been a high priority. In 1999 27 countries
signed the GOOS commitments agreement in Paris, confirming their intention to
make nationally funded observations available to GOOS.
The OECD Megascience Forum concluded that during the next ten years, during
the development of the early phases of GOOS, considerable investment is needed
in basic oceanographic science and pre-operational research into the design and
implementation strategy of GOOS. Thus some sub-systems can be implemented
7
need to understand and predict climate and global environmental change still provides an intellectual and logicallink which holds GOOS together in the long term.
In the design of the observing system and data archiving, care must be taken to
ensure that the accuracy required for climate monitoring and prediction is guaranteed, even if it is a greater level of accuracy than that needed for the shorter term
services. Through the development of GOOS every coastal state should gain practical benefits for the management of its resources and marine environment, and in
the long term the threat of climate change will be detected at the earliest possible
moment. This aggregation process is analysed by Flemming (1999).
The renewed emphasis on the short-term economic benefits on a prediction
timescale of weeks to months and applications to many different industries does
not mean a return to the disparate problems of the early 1980s. The advance in
numerical modelling techniques for major ocean basins and the coastal shelf seas
has created a synthesising force which enables scientists, planners and data managers to integrate the sum of input data gathered from many different sources, and to
generate informative products which can be used by hundreds of different customers for different reasons. It is not easy to achieve this goal, but it is possible. Thus
observations of the physical parameters of the Atlantic will be used in numerical
models which, after the addition of some other data streams, may result in products
as diverse as flood warnings in the USA, estimates of fisheries stock migration on
the continental slopes off the west coast of Ireland, and prediction of dangerous
currents and internal waves threatening oiI platforms off the Niger delta. It is possible to use one on-going programme of, for example, sea surf ace temperature
measurements, to support the generation of data products with myriad applications.
GOOS therefore offers an attractively efficient way of reducing costs and maximising benefits for many customers.
When it become clear that the shorter term economic benefits provided the main
justification for GOOS, particularly in Europe where the ENSO effect is minimal,
it was then necessary to find a way of evaluating and summing the benefits which
would accrue to a wide range of maritime and coastal industries. In September
1993 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) convened an Experts Meeting ofthe Megascience Forum in Tokyo to discuss the economics of GOOS, and from this a book was published in August 1994 (OECD,
1994). The Megascience Forum established for the first time the approximate scale
of the aggregate of all maritime industries and services, and their contribution to
national and global GNP. Since 1993-4 several countries have set up national committees to develop policies and projects in support of GOOS, and analysis of the
benefits and economics of GOOS has been a high priority. In 1999 27 countries
signed the GOOS commitments agreement in Paris, confirming their intention to
make nationally funded observations available to GOOS.
The OECD Megascience Forum concluded that during the next ten years, during
the development of the early phases of GOOS, considerable investment is needed
in basic oceanographic science and pre-operational research into the design and
implementation strategy of GOOS. Thus some sub-systems can be implemented