In order to address the territorial challenges related to sea storms effects on the coastal areas, the I-STORMS project has developed a shared and interoperable system, the I-STORMS Web Integrated System (IWS), to allow a better exchange of information among partners and stakeholders in the Adriatic-Ionian area. However, on the sea storms topic, sea sensor networks and forecast systems lack a common infrastructure where available resources can be accessed simultaneously in an aggregated and standard way. The I-STORMS approach in IWS design took advantage from previous experiences on interoperable data management but, at the same time, has created an infrastructure that constitutes the first attempt to harmonize and share in the ADRION area sea storms observational data and forecasts from different countries.
Being based on open and standard interoperability principles, the I-STORMS project has significantly enhanced data sharing and access to advanced functionalities, allowing at the same time the current existing systems to stay in place without changing their operational workflows and also fostering the partners’ capacities to deal with required data standards at EU level and beyond. The present tool allows the project to go beyond the previous experiences, identifying the IWS as a daily working tool for the involved project partners and associated partners, and consequently ensuring the durability and transferability of the project outputs.
The I-STORMS Web Integrated System (IWS) is essentialy a common system/online tool to share and integrate data and information, fostering collaboration between partners for a better response to sea storms hazard/risk in the Adriatic-Ionion area, with the purpose of improving the typology and quality of data shared by competent actors in the region.
It is composed by the following key components:
- A common sharing system of ocean observations;
- A Transnational Multi-model Ensemble System (TMES), coordinating the existing initiatives on storm surge and sea state forecasts;
- A collaborative geoportal for accessing both observations and TMES products;
- A tool set and dashboards for promoting the use to the general public (Open I-STORMS).
Since October 2019, the IWS is online.
The IWS documentation is available at https://iws.seastorms.eu/static/docs/html/index.html
Users are also invited to check the Geoportal_Handbook