AN EXPERIENCE IN MONITORING AND INTEGRATING WIND AND WAVE DATA IN THE CAMPANIA REGION

A pioneering wind and wave monitoring activity has been carried out for more than twenty years in the costal waters of Regione Campania, mostly due to the research efforts of two Universities, Istituto Universitario Navale (now Parthenope University, Naples) and the University of Salerno. A Waverider buoy was installed in the bay of Naples by the former “Istituto di Meteorologia ed Oceanografia” (now Department of Science for the Environment) at the Parthenope University, as early as 1986 (Pugliese Caratelli E. & Sansone E., 1987), long before the Italian National Wave Measuring Network (RON) was initiated, thus building up a considerable expertise as well as a long standing record of wave data in the bay of Naples. In the following years CUGRI (University Consortium for Research on Great Hazards) developed a long lasting research programme aimed at experimenting and evaluating the integration of wind and wave data from various sources with up to date modelling techniques, in close connection with the parallel work performed by the Parthenope University. This work has developed over the years by involving a large number of experimental and numerical activities, such as the positioning of a directional wave buoy (the only one so far ever located in the Campania Region) and a number of anemometers along the coast, as well as the acquisition of data from satellite SAR, altimeter and scatterometer. Wave data from a wave staff owned and run by the Civil Protection Service of Regione Campania in the bay of Salerno have also been usefully employed. A clear understanding of coastal processes, however can only be gained if all available data are systematically integrated with up to date wave modelling techniques; in order to do so LAM models have been employed to compute wind fields, numerical solution of primitive Navier Stokes equation to evaluate local wind phenomena around the coast (Bovolin et al., 1996), SWAN modelling to reconstruct wave agitation, and Montecarlo techniques to simulate SAR images. The experience and the know-how acquired by installing and operating a variety of devices and models have been instrumental in the definition of a new regional wave measuring and monitoring system for the Civil Protection of Regione Campania. Beside that, in pursuing these tasks, a number of intermediate results were reached on specific aspects, such as the wind patterns over the sea in bays, the analysis of extreme events, the calibration of altimeter wave data, the influence of various factors on SAR images over enclosed seas. In the following some of the problems which were encountered and the results which were gained will be briefly reviewed.