Preface

This book is an outcome of 'SUCCESS' (Satellite Uses: a Common Course for Engineering and Sea-conditions Studies), the purpose of which, as the acronym implies, is to make ocean engineers and naval architects more aware of the increasing availability of satellite measurements of the ocean - especially of waves - and of how they might incorporate information from these measurements into their designs and operational planning.

The aim is to make information widely available to academic institutions, staff and students, on this relatively recent development.

The SUCCESS project was funded in part by the EU, with about half the cost being met by Brussels and the other half by the participating organizations. The project co-ordinator was Michel Olagnon of IFREMER.

Besides this textbook, which is being written in English but will be translated into other European languages, the project deliverables include a video presentation and a set of overhead transparencies, all aimed to help academic staff present this relatively new subject to their students.

The book is primarily concerned with the measurement and analysis of ocean waves, and it was felt that a description of the statistics used to describe such waves should be included. Subjects covered - the satellite measurement of waves and the statistical methods of analysis - are very wide and are evolving rapidly, and this book cannot be comprehensive; but it is hoped that the many references given will help students to pursue subjects of interest.

The ability of satellite radars to measure ocean waves has been clearly demonstrated over the past 25 years. Soon I would expect Engineers and Naval Architects to utilize these data as readily as they use buoy data, but there are differences between them - especially of space / time sampling - and to make best use of them, it behoves the user to appreciate the limitations and advantages of the satellite data. This book attempts to provide such an appreciation.

Numerous people have contributed to it. The principal authors are:

Chapter 1: Dr T D Allan of Satellite Observing Systems (SOS)

Chapter 2: Dr Allan and myself (also of SOS)

Chapter 3: Dr allan with contributions form Dr M Olagnon and Dr F Becq (IFREMER) and Mr P Charriez (MétéoMer), and much useful comment form Dr P Heimbach (MPI, Hamburg).

Chapter 4-7: Professor G Lindgren of Lund University, with contributions from Professor G A Athanassoulis (National Technical University of Athens) and Mr M Olagnon (IFREMER).

Chapter 8: Dr C Aage of the Technical University of Denmark, with input, incuding the figures for this chapter, from Mr S Gouillon (MétéoMer).

I append a list of all organisations which participated in SUCCESS, with the names of the principal participants.

My task, as editor, has been to take all these various contributions and attempt to produce a consistent and coherent whole. How successful my editing has been, I leave the reader to decide. The benefit of using LATEX to compile the book will I hope be clearly visible. It has not been an easy job - for example we argued for weeks over the internet on how to define significant wave height! We also had lengthy discussions on frequency: whether to use radians/second or Hz (cycles/second); since both are widely employed, we decided to use both but to ensure the notation made clear which was meant.

Producing this book took much more effort from all of us than we envisaged when we put in our proposal to Brussels, but it has been a stimulating exercise, and I hope the reader will find the result interesting as well as useful.

D J T Carter
(Editor)
September 1998

Satellite Observing Systems
15 Church Street
Godalming, Surrey, UK.

 

Success Participants (see Contacts)

Département Génie Océanique, Institut Francais de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer
[Mr M Olagnon: Project Coordinator]

Department of Mathematical Statistics, Lund University
[Professor G Lindgren]

Dept. of Naval Architecture & Marine Technology, National Technical University of Athens
[Professor G A Athanassoulis]

Dept. of Naval Architecture & Offshore Engineering, Technical University of Denmark
[Professor C Aage]

Dipartmento di Ingegneria Navale & Technologie Marine, Universitá degli Studi di Genova
[Professor R Tedeschi]

Ecole Centrale de Paris
[Professor P Ozanne]

Faculty of Mechanical Engineering & Marine Technology, Delft University of Technology
[Dr H Boonstra]

Institutp Superior Tecnico, Lisboa
[Professor C Guedes Soares]

MétéoMer
[Mr S Gouillon]

Satellite Observing Systems
[Dr T D Allan]