nowCOAST Honored with GIS Award
Dawn Forsythe
NOAA Office of Coast Survey
August, 19 2009 — NOAA’s “nowCOAST,” a map-based online gateway to ocean and weather observations and forecasts, received a Special Achievement in geographic information system (GIS) “for its vision, leadership, and innovative use of ESRI's GIS technology” last month at the ESRI International User Conference in San Diego
ESRI is known worldwide for its GIS technology.
Micah Wengren, NOAA Office of Coast Survey IT specialist, accepted the ESRI award on behalf of Coast Survey's nowCOAST team and the National Ocean Service. Photo credit: Dawn Forsythe, NOAA OCS.
Designed by NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey as a marine spatial planning aid for recreational and commercial mariners, coastal managers and hazmat responders, the nowCOAST Web portal enables users to select map functions pinpointed at specific locations.
"The nowCOAST team is amazing," said Maureen Kenny, deputy chief for the Coast Survey Development Lab. "If there's a way to incorporate a new source of real-time geospatial data into this web tool, they will find it."
Geospatial data identifies the geographic location of the Earth’s features, such as bodies of water, mountains and land boundaries.
Coast Survey IT Specialist Micah Wengren accepted the award on behalf of NOS and his fellow team members John Kelley, physical scientist; Jason Greenlaw, NOAA contractor; and Sree Dadisetty, an intern with the University of New Hampshire/Joint Hydrographic Center.
The team was selected from more than 300,000 organizations worldwide. ESRI congratulated the nowCOAST team “for making extraordinary contributions to our global society.”
Near Real-Time Data
Updated regularly throughout the day, nowCOAST displays near real-time weather and ocean surface observations directly on its interactive map users can click through to get data for specific geographies.
It offers one-stop access to current conditions, including National Weather Service’s National Digital Forecast Database gridded forecasts of wind speed, significant wave height, relative humidity, precipitation and air temperatures for local areas. The nowCOAST portal also provides Doppler weather radar, cloud imagery and weather warnings, as well as links to ocean, river, water quality and weather data collected by other organizations.
The Office of Coast Survey is regularly expanding the content and functionality of nowCOAST. It most recently released a new version that displays the latest forecasts for all active tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic, Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico and eastern Pacific Ocean.
To access nowCOAST, please visit: http://nowcoast.noaa.gov/.
Users accessing nowCOAST, pictured in this screenshot, can select locations, map layers (types of imagery, forecasts, etc.), and other variables. Photo credit: John Kelley, NOAA OCS.