"Everybody working on developing the system is very dedicated, which is part of the success", says Cecilia Ambjörn.

In the Spotlight 

 

Interview with Cecilia Ambjörn from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Project Manager of Seatrack Web. 
 

 

 

Seatrack Web is the official HELCOM oil drift forecasting system developed and administrated by the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), the Defence Center for Operational Oceanography (DCOO), Denmark, and the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH), Germany. This user-friendly system forecasts and backtracks drift and the spreading of oil, chemicals, algae and substances in water in the Gulf of Bothnia, the Gulf of Finland, the Baltic Sea, the Sounds, Kattegat, Skagerrak and eastern part of the North Sea (out to 3° E).

  

 

1)      As the initiator of Seatrack Web, you have been involved with the project since its conception. Tell us briefly about the early days of the project. How and why was the idea was born, and when?

 

Seatrack Web actually started in the 1970s with very simple trajectory forecasts. The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute was aware at an early stage that this was crucial for minimising environmental effects and efficiently combating oil spills.
It was first named Seatrack Web in the ‘90s when we had an operational service for oil drift forecasts.
A HELCOM Recommendation stipulating that every country around the Baltic Sea should have an operational oil drift forecasting system by 1993 enhanced its development quite a lot.
By the turn of the new century, the system was made fully operational, constantly supervised and made available via the Internet for all governmental authorities.

I had been the project leader from the very start until I retired after Easter 2013 and Lennart Larsson from SMHI took my place.

 

2)      Describe your involvement in the later stages of the project. What milestones would you particularly like to mention?

 

Some milestones I’d like to mention were when Denmark (DCOO, previously DAMSA) became a partner in the development and ownership in 2000, followed by Germany (BSH) sometime later. Now Finland (FMI) is joining this year. Another was the acknowledgement that keeping the system fully operational with high accuracy needed more funding - a fact that we are constantly aware of. For more than ten years, the system has been continuously developed to maintain the high quality that is necessary.

The words from Thomas Fagö, the Swedish Coast Guard, very well describe what many of us feel - Seatrack Web is a ‘HELCOM baby’. Everybody working on developing the system is very dedicated, which is part of the success. Feedback and close contact with all users is a main part of the fun in working with Seatrack Web and also the basis for smart improvements.

A completely new platform is being developed during 2013. This gives us the opportunity to introduce more possibilities requested from the users and suggestions from our developers.

 

3)      Who are the other people behind Seatrack Web - your team? How is the work organised?

 

The team at SMHI includes IT people who take care of the drift and supervision; experts coding the interface; experts coding the physics in a very large and, by now, complicated code; and highly educated physical oceanographers. The team for the last couple of years also includes skilled persons at DCOO and BSH who contribute greatly to its development. The project leader has until now been the coordinator of this as well as maintaining contact with the users in all HELCOM countries. It was also my job to search for external funding.

 

4)      What are the main advantages of Seatrack Web? Are there any similar systems existing in the world it could be compared with?

 

The main advantages are that it is very user-friendly and that it uses the latest model physics and algorithms for the behaviour of oil. Of course, there’s a lot more we want to introduce to increase the accuracy even more!

There are a couple of other systems with similar functions. When discussions started for an oil drift system in the Black Sea, a comparison was made with other systems. The results showed that Seatrack Web was superior and was chosen for development in the Black Sea.

 

5)      How has the system been applied in real-life cases so far?

 

One very good example is the Fu Shan Hai accident in 2003 when the forecasts were extremely accurate. The results were used to improve the wind factor/calibration.

Another example is the Runner 4 accident in the mouth of Gulf of Finland in 2006 where ice conditions were severe. The results were used to analyse and validate ice conditions in the models, which later led to improvements.

 

6)      The upgrade of Seatrack Web to the Silverlight platform is listed as one of the highlights of 2012. Why is this improvement so important?

 

The main idea behind the new platform is to improve the performance and visualisation of Seatrack Web, and to provide an environment which is even more user friendly. Due to new technical solutions, it was actually necessary.

The upgrade of Seatrack Web is not in fact to the Silverlight platform - it is a web platform with a back-end based on Java. The application will now be used directly in a web browser instead of downloading a Java applet as before.

The new platform enables us to use Web Map Service (WMS) technology. This gives us the ability to easily change the appearance of the map as well as adding and removing different details based on the needs of the users. The WMS is used together with a map engine called Leaflet, which enables us to leave out the actual drawing of the map saving a lot of time and increasing the maintainability of the system.

Much work has been done to change the way the graphical user interface (GUI) works. The entire application is now divided into different views instead of having one view that handles everything as before. This makes it a more user-friendly experience as it limits the number of actions a user can carry out at any given time. It should also reduce the time it takes for a new user to learn how to use the system.

Another major change of the GUI is the way the simulations are started. It now uses a wizard which should make it much simpler for the user to start the simulations.

 

7)      Is the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) soon to join the project? What would be the next expected developments?

 

Yes, we are very much looking forward to FMI joining Seatrack Web. We are working on an agreement that will soon be finalised.

FMI has suggested introducing the NEMO model as one of the oceanographic models that drives Seatrack Web and to forecast the spread of radioactivity. We will discuss these ideas more thoroughly and maybe find more ideas that are important and useful for developing the system in our next meeting in May. We have many ideas and suggestions for improvements.