OpCIS - First Water Level Validation of the Operational Current Information System of the Port of Hamburg

The steady growth in ship sizes poses new challenges for the port of Hamburg and in combination with limited river geometry induce the need of additional nautical data to ensure the lightness and safety of shipping. Hence, the desire of hydrodynamic data for an innovative and accurate navigation support is increasing. Therefore, the Hamburg Port Authority (HPA) and DHI have developed an Operational Current Information System (OpCIS). OpCIS provides a web-based display of real-time and forecast current speeds and directions and predicts the slack tide time. To facilitate this, a fully automatized operational system composed of i) a calibrated two-dimensional hydrodynamic-numerical model, ii) data-retrieval and preprocessing, iii) recurring, simulation runs providing real-time and forecast currents, iv) storage of results in a database and v) web-based interactive visualization of the results is implemented. The application is used for operational navigation systems by the nautical headquarters, harbour-pilots and an increasing number of further stakeholders such as rescue teams. Parallel to the operational use of OpCIS, a long-term validation of the water level forecast has been carried out. In this paper first results of the long-term modelling evaluations are presented, including data quality assessments of the forecast, such as quantification of deviations from actual measurements and their origin by considering different forecast windows. Deviations can either be attributed to imprecisions of the model or the input data. Based on the findings, possible improvements of the numerical model e.g. data-assimilation of gauge data are discussed. As an outlook, further planned applications of OpCIS will be presented.