The EU-funded HiSea project has recently featured in two oceanographic publications.
Most recently, Joana Mendes and João Dias of Portugal’s University of Aveiro, together with Paulo Leitão, José Chambel Leitão, Sofia Bartolomeu and João Rodrigues of HiSea partner Hidromod, authored a paper titled “Improvement of an Operational Forecasting System for Extreme Tidal Events in Santos Estuary (Brazil)”, published on December 10, 2019. The paper incorporated research related to HiSea project as a source of funding.
The research presented “incorporates many of HiSea concepts”, commented Hidromod’s Adélio Silva.
In the paper, the authors detailed how use of Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service data at hourly resolution – as opposed to daily observations alone – decreased meteorological tide forecast errors.

“A linear regression method was developed to correct the residual tide through post-processing, under specific wave height conditions. Overall, the newest implementation increased the water-level forecast accuracy, particularly under extreme events,” the researchers wrote.
“Forecasting estuarine circulation is a hot topic, especially in densely populated regions, like Santos (Brazil),” the paper’s authors explained in the abstract. “This paper aims to improve a water-level forecasting system for the Santos estuary, particularly the physical forcing determining the residual tide, which in extreme cases increase the predicting errors.”

Additionally, HiSea’s concept, methodology and initial results were detailed in a paper circulated at the MEDCOAST 19 congress held in Marmaris, Turkey, on October 22-26, 2019.
The paper, titled “High resolution information services at sea”, and authored by HiSea partners Ghada El Serafy and Anna Spinosa of Deltares, Antoine Mangine of Argans, Adélio Silva of Hidromod, Simon van Dam of Agora Partners, Danny Pape of Ascora GmbH, Rafa Company Peris of Valenciaport PCS and Eleni Geropanagioti of Selonda.
“The services offered as the end product will be based on the harmonization of different types of data and the added value is in their fusion and merging including estimates of the uncertainties and including data provided by the users/citizens.
This allows improving operation, planning and management of different marine activities in aquaculture sectors. Such information services include among others early warning services, real-time crisis management, key performance indicators, information for planning operations, and a knowledge database,” authors said in the abstract.
The paper will be included in the conference proceedings, which will be made available to the general public as a publication on the website. The 2019 MEDCOAST congress was the fourteenth event of a biennial series begun in 1993, and aiming to contribute to coastal and marine sciences, engineering, management and conservation particularly in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
“The past thirteen meetings of the biennial MEDCOAST congress series produced 31 volumes of proceedings totalling over 19 000 pages. They constitute a very important source of information for coastal and marine sciences, engineering, management and conservation issues particularly for the Mediterranean and the Black Sea countries. MEDCOAST congress proceedings are covered by the indexing schemes such as Web of Science, Scopus and Compendex of Elsevier,” organisers noted.