Woods Hole Group

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Emergency Response Buoys & Online MetOcean Mapping

Emergency Response

In support of oil and gas exploration and production efforts around the world, Woods Hole Group provides Emergency Response Buoys (ERBs) to clients as an integral part of an emergency response. The ERB provides modelers with in-situ data to verify the quality of the modeled (synthetic) metocean data used to initialize a model to produce trajectory forecasts in the event of an emergency.

Positional data from the ERBs are received every 5 minutes and automatically processed QA/QC’d before being pushed to a secure FTP site for ingestion into a trajectory model and also displayed on the password-protected MetOcean Mapper. This process takes less than 15 minutes for each position. The MetOcean Mapper is an efficient tool that allows for the integration and representation of many data sources to place the incident site in context with the local environment.

The ERB has a 6-year shelf life. Woods Hole Group maintains an inventory of ready-to-ship buoys in our Houston facility for a client's exclusive use in the unfortunate event that additional buoys are required as part of an on going response.

Please contact us for further information and development of a region-specific response plan for the deployment of ERBs.


Driftign buoy data corroborates the oil spill trajectory forecast.