SAFE, EFFICIENT MARINE NAVIGATION

Navigation customers need predictions of coastal conditions at seaports and waterways to 

navigate safely, optimize routing and scheduling, reduce emissions, and maximize cargo loading. 

The NOS vision is to provide accurate, reliable, and accessible predictions of coastal conditions 

along the entire coast of the continental U.S., for use by marine pilots and other maritime 

stakeholders to support planning decisions up to 14 days in advance.

PROTECTING HUMAN HEALTH

Harmful algal blooms, hypoxia, and pathogens pose significant threats to human health and 

coastal economies. The NOS vision is to provide the scientific information and predictions 

coastal managers require to inform decision making, protect public health, and improve the 

ways communities interact with coastal ecosystems.

Addressing Coastal Prediction Needs

NOS aims to provide coastal predictions in support of:

Vision for Serving 

a Diverse Coast

VISION: Individuals and communities nationwide, understand and use reliable, accurate, and 

accessible predictions of coastal conditions.

The delivery of operational modeling products 

and services that meet users’ needs requires 

extensive stakeholder engagement, from research 

and development to operations and back again. 

NOS has a broad stakeholder base that craves 

reliable predictions of coastal conditions. The 

vision for the NOS modeling suite is to deliver 

nowcasts, forecasts, reanalysis, and decadal/

climate-scale projections, from regional models 

for the entire U.S. coastline. Global ocean, coastal/

estuarine, and Great Lakes modeling capabilities 

must be integrated into the NOAA Unified Forecast 

System to provide improved weather, climate, 

hydrologic, and ecological predictions. State of the 

art advances, such as real time data assimilation or 

coupling with atmospheric and hydrologic models, 

are collaboratively developed and integrated into 

the system. 

Protecting our Coastal Communities 

and the Nation’s Economy: 

A Vision for NOS Modeling

Coastal communities are the engine 

of our Nation’s economy. 

Coastal communities are home to 42% of the U.S. population, contribute 

48% to the GDP, and are projected to continue growing and developing. 

However, our Nation’s coastal communities are at increasingly greater 

risk due to a changing climate. In particular, coastal communities face 

mounting threats and costs from combinations of: life-threatening 

extreme weather events; increasingly congested seaports; harmful 

algae and pollutant loading; and changing ecosystems. Moreover, aging 

and deteriorating infrastructure cannot accommodate more frequent 

and intense floods due to sea level rise, subsidence, and high tide 

flooding. The failure of these systems threatens fresh water supplies, 

transportation systems, and energy, agricultural, and other types of 

infrastructure not meant to be inundated, especially with salt water. 

Making sound decisions requires easy access to reliable and timely 

coastal predictions of environmental parameters such as water levels, 

currents, water temperature, salinity and others that are provided 

by the NOS modeling suite where they are most needed. Improving 

stakeholder access to authoritative and best available information will 

reduce risks to life and property, enhance the economy, and promote 

social well-being in concert with our treasured coastal environment. 

NOAA, particularly the National Ocean Service (NOS) and its community 

of partners, is well positioned to meet such decision-support needs. 
COASTAL RESILIENCE AND RISK REDUCTION

Climate change and climate change impacts, including severe weather events, are perhaps the biggest 

threats to coastal communities. NOAA is accelerating the advancement of numerical weather and water 

prediction. The agency is also improving its use of numerical models to provide enhanced climate 

prediction capabilities. Given the importance of oceans and coasts within the Earth system, NOS has 

a critical role to play in both of these efforts. The NOS vision is to provide projections of changing 

coastal conditions to help coastal communities better assess their risks and plan for the future. 

IMPROVED MAPS AND COASTAL MANAGEMENT

Geospatial products and mapping tools are essential for assessing vulnerability to coastal hazards. The 

coastline is a critical connection point between terrestrial and oceanic domains. Ensuring a consistent 

reference frame spanning these domains enables spatial analyses of hazards with respect to the built 

environment in the coastal region, particularly those that vary with time. These analyses then feed 

further modeling and tools, such as NOAA’s VDatum tool. The NOS vision is to provide a consistent 

and modern spatial reference frame to provide improved accuracy and coverage for modeling and 

transformation tools across the littoral and coastal regions.

HAZARDOUS SPILL RESPONSE AND SEARCH AND RESCUE

Responding to emergencies at sea requires situational awareness of the current and predicted 

environmental conditions to inform how a situation may evolve and ensure the safety of responders. 

Two prime examples are NOAA’s hazardous materials response mission and U.S. Coast Guard’s 

search and rescue operations. The NOS vision is to provide timely, accurate, and response 

relevant information at appropriate regional and spatial scales to rapidly inform decision making 

in search and rescue operations and efforts to mitigate the threat from pollutants released into 

the coastal environment.

MANAGING COASTAL AND MARINE LIVING RESOURCES IN CHANGING CLIMATE

Changing climate and oceans are significantly impacting the nation’s valuable coastal and marine 

living resources and the many people, communities, and economies that depend upon them. NOS is 

developing integrated physical-biological predictions to support coastal and marine living resource 

management decisions. The NOS vision is to enhance prediction-based ecosystem management, 

understand the effects of climate change on living marine resources, and identify risk reduction 

strategies that optimize adaptation and resilience.

A Community Approach to Modeling

The success of NOS’ modeling program relies on the collaboration and contribution of the larger modeling 

community. NOS works with its external research partners to enhancing its modeling capabilities by:

Improving 

Research-toApplications 

(R2X)

Open Development 

Using Modern Software 

Management 

Principles

Developing 

Geospatial 

Infrastructure 

and Tools

Enhancing 

Communication 

to Foster 

Collaboration