NOAA's National Ocean Service has developed nowCOAST (http://nowcoast.noaa.gov), a GIS-based Web mapping portal to provide the coastal community with a centralized site to display real-time coastal observations and NOAA forecasts in the U.S. The portal provides users with both an on-map display of the latest surface observations, analyses, forecasts, and selected warnings as well as geo-referenced hyperlinks to thousands of near real-time environmental observations from federal and non-federal observing networks and model forecast guidance, forecast discussions, and text forecasts from NOAA. The user is able to display the coastal information via nowCOAST's map viewer and a data browser window. The map viewer allows the user to turn on and off map layers, overlay map layers, and use common GIS desktop tools such as zoom and pan to navigate to their geographic area of interest.

The nowCOAST portal is used by a variety of users involved in different activities including recreational boating, commercial shipping, emergency management, search and rescue, coastal management, and HAZMAT response. During the past two years, there has been an increasing demand by agencies involved in emergency management, homeland security, and search and rescue to be able to directly access nowCOAST map services to acquire maps of real-time observations, imagery, and forecasts in addition to viewing information via the nowCOAST map viewer and data browser. Two collaborative projects are ongoing to test and improve nowCOAST map services for use by emergency management and homeland security.

The first collaborative project is with the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). NGA has developed and operates Palanterra, a Web-enabled common operational picture (COP) mapping portal. The purpose of Palanterra is to provide federal defense and civilian agencies with the ability to visualize, analyze, and act upon the latest geospatial intelligence in real-time during national security events, national disasters, and civil and military homeland security exercises. Palanterra connects to the nowCOAST ArcIMS's image service to obtain the maps of the latest NOAA meteorological and oceanographic analyses and observations. The nowCOAST development team is working with the Palanterra team to provide additional NOAA analysis and forecast products to improve the COP for their users.

The second project is with the NOS' Coastal Service Center (CSC) as part of the Southern California Coastal Storms Program. CSC is developing a GIS-based desktop decision support tool to assist emergency managers in Southern CA in responding to coastal storms and associated hazards in order to reduce human, environmental, and economic impacts. NowCOAST is providing, via its image service, maps of near-real-time observations and forecasts and testing the ability to also provide maps of selected gridded surface weather forecasts from the NWS' National Digital Forecast Database.

In the coming year, additional NOAA products will be added to nowCOAST's map viewer and image service. In addition, nowCOAST will establish an Open Geospatial Consortium Web Map Service and potentially a Web Feature Service to provide broader access to its data layers.