Modeling Testbed

In Fiscal Year 2010 the US IOOS Program initiated a coastal ocean modeling testbed via a $4M competitive grant awarded to the Southeastern University Research Association http://www.sura.org/home/index.html.

The purpose of the testbed is to make significant progress towards the realization of IOOS modeling and data analysis subsystem through implementation of an extensible, scalable and sustainable community modeling environment and demonstration of a super regional test bed. http://testbed.sura.org/

Goals

The Testbed will demonstrate how to improve forecasting of environmental phenomena focused on chronic and extreme conditions within the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts through evaluating and transitioning models, tools, toolkits and other capabilities into a Federal operational facility or other entities as appropriate.

The community modeling environment and Testbed will enable academic, private sector and public sector modeling experts to cost- effectively use identical variables, boundary conditions, initial conditions, parameterizations, and share the use of models, data, tools and other inputs to rigorously test and evaluate the forecasting skill of specific models.

The common modeling environment and Testbed will integrate data from observing networks throughout IOOS Regional Associations, Federal, state and local agencies and from other sources.

The community modeling environment and Testbed will provide a means for identifying, prioritizing and resolving issues associated with interoperable coupling of a range of models such as coastal, oceanic, atmospheric, hydrologic and ecological.

Outcomes

Anticipated outcomes upon project completion in December 2011 include:

In collaboration with Federal partners, demonstrate development of metrics and a system to evaluate the potential feasibility, costs, and benefits of improvement to existing operational capabilities of transitioning current and emerging community- based ocean and coastal models into Federal operational facilities.
Establish cooperative development of strategies and specific steps needed to transition existing models or modeling systems into Federal operational facilities including addressing issues of transition costs, reliability, expanded coverage, etc.
Define and transition into a Federal operational facility one or more models, tools, toolkits or other capabilities to advance an operational capability to predict an environmental extreme event in the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. The transition to a Federal operational agency is not intended to imply a model, tool or other capability is operational, but rather has been implemented by the agency under pre-operational conditions.
Demonstrate how the applicants will use and build upon existing infrastructure, models and expertise to maximize the benefits to the modeling community and leverage existing resources, capacities and capabilities. There are multiple existing community models and modeling systems and ongoing activities to leverage. Data management activities should use IOOS DMAC standards and protocols, or if not defined, should be coordinated with DMAC activities under way at the IOOS Program Office and within the National Science Foundation Ocean Observatories Initiative Cyberinfrastructure (OOI/CI).
Establish roles and responsibilities of academic, government and private sector modeling experts, infrastructure and capabilities in the modeling environment and test bed demonstration.
Demonstrate engagement of customer or end users that define the requirements for modeling improvements and provide feedback and evaluation from beginning to end of the modeling project.
Conduct end-to-end modeling process of data access and assimilation, interoperable model coupling, model output delivery, model testing and evaluation, analysis, visualization, skill assessment and user evaluation.
Describe suggested strategies for sustaining the modeling test bed infrastructure and expanding to other areas, models or problems.

Applications of the Modeling Testbed

Coastal Inundation

The objective of the coastal inundation group is to provide meaningful guidance on the behavior (e.g., accuracy, robustness, execution speed) and implementation requirements (e.g., resolution, parameterization, computer capacity) of models that are presently in “operational use”, or that are under consideration for such use, for computing waves, storm surge and inundation. Additionally, they are helping to develop testbed infrastructure that promotes standards, interoperability and data/model archives to greatly facilitate future model evaluation.
http://testbed.sura.org/inundationfrontpage

Gulf of Maine / Scituate Harbor - Extratropical Domain

Shelf Hypoxia

The objective of the Shelf Hypoxia team is to create a near real-time synoptic scale hypoxia forecast capability to capture the true temporal variability of formation, extent, duration and severity of the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone. The long term goal is to develop and transition to operations a coupled biogeochemical/physical model to forecast the real-time, synoptic scale development and evolution of physical and ecosystem processes in the Northern Gulf of Mexico.
http://testbed.sura.org

Five Hydrodynamic Models Configured for the Chesapeake Bay

Estuarine Hypoxia

The objective of the Estuarine Hypoxia team is to evaluate and transition scientific findings for use in short term (≤~15 day) hypoxia forecast tools at NOAA. Additionally, the team is further exploring model properties that lead to the inability of hydrodynamic models to capture the observed intensity of density stratification in moderately energetic estuaries such as the Chesapeake Bay.
http://testbed.sura.org/ehfrontpage

Cyberinfrastructure

Snaphot from the cyberinfrustructure Data Expolrer

The objective of the Cyberinfrastructure team is to work with each of the other teams to facilitate maintaining a database to collect observational data with valuable metadata for everyone to be able to access. Additionally, the team assists in the development of tools to compare forecast models in order to assess models and modeling tools to help determine which can be used in an operational setting at a federal level.
http://testbed.sura.org/cifrontpage