The Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA), in collaboration with the NOAA Integrated Ocean Observing System program and other federal partners, has begun the development of a testbed to help accelerate progress in both research and the transition to operational use of models for coastal and estuarine prediction. The testbed benefits members of the academic research and development community who are interested in evaluating their models against high priority operational applications, and groups that are engaged in the operational use of these models. These benefits are realized by facilitating a close interaction between the academic and operational communities on projects designed to address the transition of models from research to operations.

Capabilities that the testbed is providing include: (i) a cyber-environment where researchers and operational groups can collaborate on multiple, selected modeling applications to expedite the transition of models from research to operations; (ii) tools that leverage or, as necessary, define community standards to enable the efficient access, visualization, skill assessment and other evaluation of model results; (iii) an organized archive of observational data, model inputs and model results that can be used for testing and evaluating current and future models in high priority areas; (iv) quantitative data on the behavior (e.g., skill, robustness, execution speed) and implementation requirements (e.g., resolution, parameterization, computer capacity) that characterize the suitability and performance of selected models from both operational and fundamental science perspectives; and (v) the actual transition into operational use of models, tools and toolkits that advance operational modeling.

Initial testbed activities are focused on: • Cyber Infrastructure: to develop a data archive and tools that provide end-to-end data integration and delivery using existing standards that will allow modelers to access observed data and large scale models for boundary conditions, forcing, and data assimilation, and deliver results for model analysis, comparison, visualization, and evaluation; • Coastal Waves, Surge and Inundation: to evaluate the behavior and implementation requirements of coastal models of tides, surge, waves and the resulting inundation that occurs during severe storms; • Estuarine Hypoxia: to evaluate existing hydrodynamic and water quality models used or likely to be used for operations and/or for regulation in the Chesapeake Bay and other, similar estuarine environments; and • Shelf Hypoxia: to evaluate and transition to operations a coupled biogeochemical/physical model capable of predicting the real-time initiation and evolution of hypoxic events in the northern Gulf of Mexico on synoptic timescales.

Our talk will introduce the testbed in preparation for subsequent talks on specific findings and accomplishments from the first 18 months of testbed activities.