System design and user requirements study (IWICOS)

The overall objective of IWICOS is to develop a prototype marine information system that will provide a single-entry access to integrated meteorological, sea ice and oceanographic (met-ice-ocean) products in electronic form, and to demonstrate this prototype for a group of users working in fisheries, sea transport, exploitation of marine resources in Northern European waters.

As a first part of this RTD project, a user requirements and design study has been undertaken, in the period from January to August 2000. The following recommendations have been proposed:

• IWICOS should recognise that the marine user community may have different needs for information, may work in different regions and have different educational background.
• The IWICOS system must be able to combine information from different sources in a flexible way.
• IWICOS should provide an integrated system enabling users to access and display all information with one system. It is important that users do not have to worry about sources of a given information layer and formats.
• It is important that the IWICOS system has a user friendly interface so difficulties with understanding and using the system will not obstruct the application and dissemination of the system.
• IWICOS should aim at adopting existing standards for data presentation, e.g. standard colour coding of ice charts and standard symbols for presentation of meteorological information and ensure source independence and seamless display of data from different sources.
• IWICOS must disseminate products using standard technologies and standard data exchange formats.
• IWICOS must acknowledge the limitations of marine communication systems and the cost of using them and must adopt methods to effectively handle these problems.
• IWICOS should provide a range of products with different levels of information, aimed at different user groups. In both demonstration periods a representative set of free products should be prepared and advertised through the IWICOS web site, to raise awareness of the service and allow for a wide audience to give feedback on the products and IWICOS prototypes developed.IWICOS Report No. 1 System design and user requirement study ii Contract No. Integrated Weather, Sea Ice and Ocean Service System September 2000
IST-1999-11129
• The cost of the met-ice-ocean products is another important aspect in the end-users' evaluation of IWICOS. Some products will require high-priced input data and/or a significant amount of processing and therefore be expensive to generate, while others may be produced by means of low-cost input data and simple, automated processing tools.