Operational oceanography - a view ahead

This Special Volume aimed to provide a description of the existing state-of-the-art in Operational Oceanography in coastal waters, this concluding chapter reviews recent progress and includes a look forward to future developments. Preceding chapters reviewed user-needs, de scribed states of development in tidal, surge, wave, turbulence and sediment models and assessed observational data requirements. Whilst future development depends on a wide spectrum of incremental developments (such as described in this volume), the need for international collaboration is crucial to ensure obstacles are recognised ahead of time allowing these to be addressed with the appropriate scale of resources. Likewise the trend towards coupled sea-ocean-atmosphere forecasting models is likely to accelerate, introducing significant 'operational' and 'coupling' issues. Meanwhile the steady assemblage of the GOOS (Global Ocean Observing System) provides opportunities to impact on its planning to ensure optimal benefits-both economic and environmental. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.