News

Title	GlobWave: Call for Proposal is now open for competitive tender
	2008-07-14
	The Invitation To Tender (ITT) on the DUE, "GlobWave", Ref. AO5686 in the ESA Invitations to Tender, has been published on EMITS with a closing date of 22 September 2008.
	The European Space Agency (ESA) hereby invites all interested companies from DUE participating countries to submit a tender for the GlobWave procurement. If companies are not yet registered as an ESA bidder, they are invited to obtain access to EMITS by completing a questionnaire, which can be found at the indicated URL below, section Registration Request. Information on sea-surface wind-generated waves is of vital importance in many areas of application, including ship routing, marine engineering, pollution modelling, coastal erosion, weather prediction and scientific research. The user community for wave information is correspondingly broad, comprising scientific researchers, commercial service providers, meteorological agencies and other public services such as coast guards and port authorities. For many years satellites have provided routine observations of sea state from satellite altimeters and synthetic aperture radar. However, the diversity of satellite observations from different agencies and different instruments, and the complex interpretation of the measurements they provide, has impeded the full uptake of satellite wave data by the potential user community. The objective of the GlobWave project is to improve user community uptake by addressing some of these barriers. In practice this will involve several linked activities: (i) development and maintenance of a web portal providing a single point of reference for satellite wave data and associated information; (ii) intercomparison of SAR and altimeter wave data with in-situ measurements, and cross-characterisation between different satellite data streams; (iii) provision, via the web portal, of a uniform, harmonised, quality-controlled, multi-sensor set of satellite wave data and ancillary information, in a common format, with consistent characterisation of errors and biases; (iv) piloting the use of satellite wave measurements for the spatial verification of wave model forecasts. The user community includes scientific researchers, commercial service providers, meteorological agencies and other public agencies such as coast guards and port authorities.