WIREDGOV

The Met Office has signed an agreement with JBA Consulting to offer ForeCoast® Marine, its meteorological and oceanographic (metocean) risk management software, to its marine and offshore clients.

ForeCoast® Marine is an innovative planning, visualisation and decision support tool which utilises Met Office forecast data to reduce costs and meteocean risks.

Working collaboratively, JBA Consulting and the Met Office co-designed ForeCoast® Marine to provide a comprehensive solution for managing metocean risks throughout the lifecycle of a marine energy or construction project: from pricing weather into tenders, to designing detailed construction and operations & maintainence strategies, through to managing live weather risks.

The capability within ForeCoast® Marine combines the latest science in probabilistic forecasting* with a range of tools to support decision making all of which is optimised for use on mobile devices. This brings together forecasting data, weather observations and operational data in one place allowing users to:

• Compute the viability of complex and uncertain missions, anywhere, in just a few clicks
• Optimise the timing and sequencing of missions to reduce downtime
• Track and manage missions through time
• Evaluate the reliability of forecasts using ForeCoast® Marine’s unique “Forecast Health Check”
• Receive automated alerts and warnings if forecasted conditions will jeopardise upcoming missions
• Archive all of the information used to make decisions, demonstrating good practice, and supporting dispute resolution.

Dr Douglas Taylor, Business and Operations Manager, Offshore Energy at the Met Office said: “We are pleased to offer ForeCoast® Marine to the offshore industry through this new agreement with JBA. It provides an innovative framework within which to share our expert forecasting advice and data to support clients in their efforts to reduce costs and minimise health and safety risks.”

JBA Consulting are engineers, environmental consultants, designers and scientists, managing weather and flood related risks for clients across a wide range of sectors including: Government and Regulatory, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Development, Third Sector, Transport and Infrastructure and Utilities.

Dr Mark Lawless, JBA Director said: “JBA is delighted to extend our relationship with the Met Office through this reseller agreement. The Met Office’s commitment to the development of the software through its contribution of the latest science in probabilistic forecasting has allowed the software to provide improved levels of insight and certainty with respect to the viability of marine operations.  This represents a step change in the way forecasting data is used.”

For more information on the ForeCoast® Marine product , visit: www.forecoastmarine.com.

*Probabilistic forecasting provides a confidence indicator for different event outcomes occurring and provides greater insight and certainty with respect to the viability of marine operations than standard deterministic forecasting approaches, which provides a single outcome with no indication of forecast uncertainty.