Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MyOcean FO (Pre-Operational Marine Service Continuity in Transition towards Copernicus)

Teaser

The main objective of the MyOcean Follow On project is to ensure the continuity of service from previous MyOcean and MyOcean2 projects in order to provide a seamless transition to the following Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service to begin early 2015. It means that...

Summary

The main objective of the MyOcean Follow On project is to ensure the continuity of service from previous MyOcean and MyOcean2 projects in order to provide a seamless transition to the following Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service to begin early 2015. It means that the technical objectives are to deliver and operate a rigorous, robust and sustainable Copernicus service component for Ocean Monitoring and Forecasting and thus help implement a stable and sustainable system configuration, including both service and organisation.
In continuity to MyOcean2, the MyOcean-FO objective was to deliver and operate a rigorous, robust and sustainable Copernicus marine service component for Ocean Monitoring and Forecasting in continuity with past and ongoing initiatives in the GMES and EU marine research framework, and thus help implement a stable and sustainable system configuration, including both service and organisation, to enable the next Copernicus Marine Service operational phase. Besides continuity and operational consolidation, MyOcean-FO included the necessary development activity to enable and sustain an operational service, with new improvements required by users or new capabilities driven by the context of Operational Oceanography, in particular related to the uptake of the newly available Sentinel satellite data.

MyOcean-FO\'s raison d\'être is its service commitment to users. They are European agencies and policy convention offices, national public institutions with operational and/or research objectives, private companies developing their own downstream services, and also European citizens on the lookout for a new vision of the oceans. MyOcean-FO users operate in four spheres of application, marine safety, marine resources, marine and coastal environment, and weather, climate & seasonal forecasting. MyOcean-FO delivers generic information on the physical state of the ocean and ecosystem characteristics to these European and international user communities.
The project is designed to provide reliable and timely information on ocean monitoring and forecasting. A central organisation will continue operating the current MyOcean2 service, to respond to user requests and feedback in accordance with Service Level Agreements. The MyOcean-FO service offer is based on an \'open & free access\' data policy.

MyOcean Follow On is driven by five main objectives:
• A user driven service: provide a sustainable service validated and commissioned by users;
• A pan-European organization: to propose and implement a long-term service provision organization with a stable governance and financial model;
• A core service: to propose the product and service portfolio of the European Ocean Monitoring and Forecasting component of the GMES Marine Service;
• An integrated capacity: to organise a robust and optimised OMF/GMS production and service infrastructure, in order to achieve economies of scale;
• A methodology for development: to propose a methodological approach, compliant with best European standards and practices.

Work performed

I.2.1 A user driven service: provide a sustainable service validated and commissioned by users


It is one of the main goals of the MyOcean-Follow On project to strengthen the links with the users, at different levels:
• The main interfaces for the users are the MyOcean Service Desk (human organisation) and the MyOcean Web Portal. Through these interfaces, day-to-day communication and information are provided to users, for instance about production outages. Through the same interfaces, users can interact with the MyOcean Service, ask questions, raise problems, get information about products and their quality, etc. At the end of the MyOcean2 project, more than 5000 users are registered to the service and more than 140 operational uses are daily dependent on the MyOcean service to operate their own downstream service.
• The project is also organised so that the management and the governance bodies are in close relationship with the main stakeholders among which some are also users. This is the case for example of European agencies using MyOcean products.
• The cross-cutting Work Package 3 specifically deals with “User Uptake at National and regional levels”. An important task has been performed with a large number of demonstrations of the use of MyOcean products and services by the downstream sector. This also helps getting feedback from real applications. A new area of applications has also started to be investigated with the MyOcean response to the ICES call about Supply of Operational oceanography Products and Services.
• WP2 (Service Evolution, Management and support) manages all the processes needed to translate user needs (requirements) into Service Specifications (see Figure 1). While all the Service and System requirements have been fully revisited during the previous MyOcean2 project, MyOcean Follow On has been more focused on the collection of user feedback about the service, from daily interactions with users (mainly through the Service Desk) and by questionnaires which proved that users are very keen to be involved in the Service definition process.
• Users are also engaged in the service validation process by the project (WP2) with specific tasks defined for Beta-testers when a new version is being deployed in operations. This allows useful feedback from experimented users in different application areas.


I.2.2 A pan-European organization: to propose and implement a long-term service provision organization with a stable governance and financial model

The MyOcean Follow On project, in continuation to MyOcean2, has proposed both structuration and organisation of the Copernicus Marine Service. MyOcean Follow On proposes a model of governance that should evolve for the next Copernicus operational phase. In particular the model of a unified Service from a user point of view, supported by a strongly distributed architecture for production functions and integrated by a Central Information System should serve for the future phase. In addition, the importance of cross-cutting activities, not only for high level management but also for common technical activities throughout the different sub-systems proved to be an efficient tool for managing important issues. One meaningful example is provided by the MyOcean Ocean State Report which is a unique example of a common re-processing and re-analysis effort for a description of the state of the ocean at global and regional scales.


This organisation relies on existing and experienced operational centres in Europe. The sharing of activities takes into account the specific skills of each partner and avoids duplication of efforts. Though the production is distributed in more than 30 different production units, they are gathered in coordinated production centres delivering the ocean products in a standard and unified manner so that the MyOcean Service offers a unique catalogue and interface to users.


Early 2014, the European Commission issued a Request for Expres

Final results

The EC/H2020 MyOcean Follow On project has been set up in the perspective of the Copernicus Marine Service as an operational continuity of the EC/FP7 MyOcean2 (2012-2014) services for the 8 month period from October 2014 to May 2015. The main objective of this project has been to ensure the continuity of the service for the users, bridging from the previous FP7 MyOcean and MyOcean2 projects to the operational phase of the Marine Service in the frame of the Copernicus Programme: the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service.
Therefore the main objective of the project was to deliver and operate a rigorous, robust and sustainable Copernicus service component for Ocean Monitoring and Forecasting and thus help implement a stable and sustainable system configuration, including both service and organisation, to enable the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service operational phase to begin in early 2015.
The MyOcean Service, implemented by the MyOcean Follow On project, is committed to its users. They are European agencies and policy convention offices, national public institutions with operational and/or research objectives, private companies developing their own downstream services, and also European citizens on the lookout for a new vision of the oceans. MyOcean users operate in four spheres of application, marine safety, marine resources, marine and coastal environment, and weather, climate & seasonal forecasting. MyOcean2 delivers generic information on the physical state of the ocean and ecosystem characteristics to these European and international user communities. The MyOcean Service provides core ocean information at global and European regional scales, from satellite and in-situ observations and from assimilative models in real time and over long time series. Essential ocean variables such as Currents, Temperature, Salinity, Sea Level, Sea Ice, Surface winds and Biogeochemistry are made available in a common catalogue presented in a single easy-access interface
The project has been designed to provide reliable and timely information on ocean monitoring and forecasting. A central organisation continues to operate the service, to respond to user requests and feedback in accordance with Service Level Agreements. The MyOcean open and free service is in line with the Copernicus Data Policy and responsive to user wishes. The project has implemented the fifth version of the MyOcean Service. The organisation implemented by MyOcean Follow On paves the way for next Copernicus operational phase as it is fully integrated at the pan-European scale, integrating state-of-the-art S&T capacities, interfaced with stakeholder facilities, compliant with the INSPIRE data architecture and ready for operations.
The MyOcean “System of systems” relies on existing European operational oceanography infrastructures and is composed of 12 main Production Centres – 5 Thematic Assembly Centres (TAC) providing observation products and 7 Monitoring and Forecasting Centres (MFC) dealing with modelling and assimilation. Each Production Centre, responsible for its domain or area, reduces unnecessary duplication. It integrates into the overall MyOcean system through a Central Information System managing data flows and providing a unique and standard interface to users. The service and system has been made possible by rigorous project management and engineering methodologies for both system and organisation, including common planning, milestones and reviews according to standard guidelines and assessed by external experts. Strong standardisation efforts in product quality and performance in all Production Centres have also been centrally coordinated to provide users with reliable and unified product quality information.
At the end of the MyOcean Follow On project, more than 5000 users are registered to the service and more than 140 operational users are depending every day on the MyOcean service for providing their own downstream service t

Website & more info

More info: http://www.myocean.eu.