The 2nd EuroSea Tide Gauge Workshop, held on the 4th/5th May 2023 in Madrid and online, was a great opportunity for the tide gauge community to come together and share ideas, updates and innovations. OceanWise were invited to participate in the hybrid event, discussing our involvement with the UK Environment Agency’s National Tide Gauge Network.
Our talk discussed some of the challenges we have faced across the network, ranging from the variety of equipment in place across the sites, plus the development of the OceanWise ‘WiseBox’ signal processor, which has been adding resilience and confidence to the network’s data whilst supporting new technologies and maintaining the long-term data record. An important theme of the event related to GNSS levelling techniques, which has certainly been an important factor in our stewardship of the maintenance contract so far. Tide gauge data is only really useful in the long term when you know the precise datum of the instrument or sensor, as this is the only way of tracking factors including sea level rise, but also potential ground subsidence of the shore.
It was really interesting hearing about the new methods being adopted across the European networks, including ultra-dense Internet of Things (IoT) systems, and research into different technologies being trialled and deployed. We certainly came away feeling inspired by our European colleague’s work and will be applying some of the suggestions made during the event into our own methodologies going forward.
