IOC Executive Secretary Delivers IMarEST Stanley Gray Lecture
Dr Patricio A Bernal, Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) delivered the IMarEST Stanley Gray Lecture ‘The Global Ocean Observing System: The Engineering and Markets of Global Earth Observations’.
A series of ocean-going and space platforms are being instrumented to measure the physical, chemical and biological properties of the ocean, as part of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), GOOS is being developed to satisfy the needs of a wide variety of potential end-users.
The newly acquired data streams from GOOS are integrated into numerical models of the ocean that enable increasingly accurate and precise forecasts of ocean properties at different spatial scales from hours to weeks into the future. The integrated use of these soft and hard-technologies in the ocean and other domains is enabling a true new engineering, that of Earth Observing Systems, Dr Bernal explained, likening the system that will eventually be in place to another global phenomenon, the internet, of use to the public and private sectors worldwide.
Operational Oceanography is one of ten streams that will feature as component parts of the World Maritime Technology Conference (6-10 March 2006) being hosted by IMarEST in London in partnership with 23 other maritime associations.
