Impacts of Coastal Storms to be Predicted by New System
August 2, 2002
Columbia, SC — Impacts of storm surges and other threatening coastal conditions may soon be more quickly and easily predicted, thanks to a new system being developed by the University of South Carolina's Belle W. Baruch Institute in participation with Advanced Solutions Group.
The Carolinas Coastal Ocean Observing and Prediction System (Caro-COOPS) will help researchers monitor conditions in the coastal Carolinas. The system will include a web portal, providing real-time information to help understand and forecast natural hazards, unusual water conditions such as algal blooms, and storm surges. The system will benefit the environment and economy by helping to reduce the impacts of these hazards before they become major disasters.
Coastal managers will be able to use the system to store information across a multitude of variables, such as currents, waves, tides, temperature, and wind, over a long range of time and space. Researchers then can use the system to build models to visualize and understand different groupings of this complex information. The system will include not only ocean data, but also information on estuaries of the Carolina coast.
The Caro-COOPS initiative is a joint partnership among USC, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. The system will be one of the first to include real-time monitoring and visualization of complex coastal data and will serve as a model for other such systems across the United States.
| ASG Media Contact:
Beth Herron |
