Forecasting and observing the open-to-coastal ocean for Copernicus users

General Information

The main ambition of FOCCUS is to improve and advance the coastal dimension of the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) by enhancing existing capability, developing innovative coastal products. Designing and demonstrating the integration of Copernicus and Member State coastal services will allow a seamless and fit-for-use monitoring and forecasting of the ocean from global to regional and coastal scales. Co-production of coastal services will reinforce the quality, efficiency and exploitation of Copernicus research and specific applications will demonstrate FOCCUS’s progress beyond the state of the art for challenges such as the protection of the coastal zone, the development of a sustainable blue economy, and the building of coastal zone resilience to climate change, anthropogenic pressures and natural hazards. At the heart of the proposed methodology is the use of new space (such as Sentinels) and in situ coastal observations, innovations in data fusion, data processing and visualisation together with seamless numerical coastal prediction from the regional to the near-shore, also connecting to the estuarine scale. Novel approaches will be used to ensure evolvement at the forefront of modern research and technology, in-line with the innovation and digitalisation required for the European digital ocean and water knowledge system.
FOCCUS will ensure credible pathways for effective uptake and exploitation of key outcomes and research results by the user community, thereby fostering the acceptance and efficient application of novel information products by society. This will include demonstrations of the technical readiness of the proposed evolutions and active dialogue with European and international initiatives to ensure the global community is aware of FOCCUS, and that results contribute to wider efforts.

Hereon is the coordinator of the FOCCUS project. The main contributions of Hereon to FOCCUS include:

• Implement new modelling techniques for use in operational production chains of the open-to-coastal ocean;
• Assess and demonstrate the added value of new modelling techniques;
• Validation and demonstration of modelling interfaces improvements;
• Design, building and demonstration of applications to better manage and protect the coastal area;
• Design, building and demonstration of applications to enhance blue economy.

EU-Programme Acronym and Subprogramme Area	HORIZON-CL4-2023-SPACE-01-34
Project Type	Research and Innovation Action (RIA)
Contract Number	Grant Agreement 101133911
Co-ordinator	Helmoltz-Zentrum hereon GmbH (DE)

Funding for the Project (€)	Funding for Hereon (€)
4,999,655	544,531

Contact Person at Hereon

Dr. Joanna Staneva, Institute of Coastal Systems - Analysis and Modeling, Hydrodynamics and Data Assimilation, KSD, Phone: +49 (0)4152 87-1804 E-mail contact

Participants

Carsten Brockmann Consult (DE), Centro Euro-Mediterraneo per i Cambiamenti Climatici SCARL (IT), Collecte Localisation Satellites SA (FR), Consiglio Nazionale delle Richerche (IT), Consorcio para la construccion, equipamiento y explotacion del Sistema de Observacion Cost (ES), Danish Meteorological Institute (DK), EuroGOOS AISBL (BE), Institut Francais de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer IFREMER (FR), Maritime Hydrographic Directorate (RO), Mercator Ocean (FR), Norwegian Meteorological Office, Oslo (NO), Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences (BE), SEASCAPE Belgium (BE), Service Hydrographique et Oceanographique de la Marine (FR), Stichting Deltares (NL), Stiftelsen Nansen Senter for Fjernmaaling (NO), Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SE), +ATLANTIC Associacao Para Unlaboratorio Colaborativo Doatlantico (PT)

Last Update: 12. January 2024