Calypso - HF Radar Monitoring System and Response against Marine Oil Spills in the Malta Channel
Original (non-English) name
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Citation
The data are derived by the HF radar system developed within the CALYPSO project partly financed by the EU under the Operational Programme Italia-Malta 2007-2013, and co-ordinated by Prof. Aldo Drago from the Physical Oceanography Unit of the IOI-Malta Operational Centre of the University of Malta.
Abstract
The CALYPSO HF radar network consists of multiple CODAR Seasonde radar stations on the Maltese Islands and the southern coast of Sicily, providing synoptic maps of sea surface currents in real-time every hour and with a high resolution and coverage in space.
CALYPSO is a 2-year project partly financed by the EU under the Operational Programme Italia-Malta 2007-2013 and co-ordinated by Prof. Aldo Drago from the Physical Oceanography Unit of the University of Malta. It brings together 3 other partners from Malta – namely Transport Malta, Civil Protection Department, and Armed Forces of Malta – and 4 partners from Sicily – ARPA Sicilia, IAMC-CNR Capo Granitola, Università degli Studi di Palermo (UNIPA), and Università di Catania (CUTGANA). The consortium consists of research entities and also public entities with responsibilities for civil and environmental protection, surveillance, security, and response to hazards.
The main project deliverable is the setting up of a permanent and fully operational HF radar observing system, capable of recording (in real-time with hourly updates) surface currents in the Malta Channel. The system consists of HF radar installations on northern Malta and southern Sicilian shores at selected sites and combines stations to elaborate and publish data to users.
Collected data, combined to numerical models, are intended to primarily support applications to optimize intervention in case of oil spill response as well as endow tools for search and rescue, security, safer navigation, improved metro-marine forecasts, monitoring of sea conditions in critical areas such as proximity to ports, and better management of the marine space between Malta and Sicily.