Using NOOS-Drift services tacitly assumes the acceptance of the following service definition and conditions of use.
NOOS-Drift is an on-demand service aiming at providing drift forecast with improved estimation of the uncertainty in case of oil spill and/or search and rescue targets adrift. The service areas covers the European North West Shelf seas and the north-east part of the Atlantic Ocean from 48°N to 62°N and from 20°W to 13°E. Drift simulations can be be requested anywhere in this domain for the time period [today-96h; today + 96h].
NOOS-Drift service encompasses all the actions necessary to handle a drift simulation request, including the submission of a drift forecast, the execution of the request on the NOOS-Drift distributed system, the multi-models ensemble analysis, the visualization of the forecast results on a web application and eventually the download of these results for post-processing or visualization by the end-users.
NOOS-Drift products associated to a simulation request are the results in netCDF format produced by the different models connected to the NOOS-Drift distributed system, the multi-models ensemble analysis results (in geoJSON format) and the set of maps, figures and other features related to the simulation that can be visualized on the NOOS-Drift web application.
Only registered users can access NOOS-Drift service and products.
Two groups of registered users have been defined:
To become a registered user, a person must first fill in the NOOS-Drift registration form. Presently the service is restricted to new users coming from a NOOS member institute or from a public agency, maritime authority or coastguards stations from one of the Bonn Agreement contracting parties, provided the service providers connected to NOOS-Drift and of the NOOS members from the user’s country agree. The later limitation will only be aimed at restricting access to users able to correctly interpret results from the NOOS-Drift multi-models analysis.
Developed under the umbrella of the NOOS working group on drift, NOOS-Drift must cover the whole European North West Shelf and the margin Atlantic Ocean from 48°N to 62°N and from 20°W to 13°E (Figure 8). The boundary with the Baltic Sea is located at the Kattegat Strait at 57.5°N from 10.5°E to 12°E.
NOOS-Drift is a near-real time service activated on demand in order to forecast trajectories and assess trajectory accuracy in case of oil spill and search and rescue targets adrift. It is expected that NOOS-Drift multi-model joint analysis results shall be available within 30 minutes after a request is submitted. This analysis won’t be updated afterwards, unless the service is activated again.
A user can contact NOOS-Drift consortium via the contact information available in the NOOS-Drift web site. However, NOOS-Drift does not operate a 24/7 service desk.
The intellectual property rights of all NOOS-Drift product, tools and services belongs to the NOOS-Drift consortium.
Personal data collected during the registration process is limited to a name, an email address, an affiliation (name of the institute/agency), a username and a password. These details are mandatory to process the registration request and operate the NOOS-Drift service. In no case, these data will be transferred to a third party. Personal data of the rejected registration forms are deleted. The password is encrypted and is therefore only known by the user. A user can access and modify his/her personal data.
When using the service, a registered user must be aware that, at the creation of a simulation request, his/her username is stored as metadata in the NOOS-Drift simulation database. This metadata is mandatory to retrieve his/her simulations. It might also be used for statistical purposes.
The NOOS-Drift website and the NOOS-Drift web application are monitored by Google Analytics.
NOOS-Drift is presently jointly operated by the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS), Météo-France and Met-Norway. Each model service provider is responsible for the maintenance of the computing node it hosts. In addition, RBINS is in charge of the maintenance of the NOOS-Drift website, of the NOOS-Drift web application and of the NOOS-Drift central communication node.
It is expected that in the coming years, other members of the NOOS working group on drift will become NOOS-Drift model service providers. At least, members from Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands and Ireland have already expressed interest to join the system once developed.
Having been launched in November 2019, the NOOS-Drift system is still in its infancy and therefore will benefit of future improvements/evolution. In order to make this evolution possible, the service elements, the conditions of use and/or the disclaimer can be adapted without prior consultation of the users. However, users will be notified of changes by email.
The costs associated to the service operation are currently supported by the NOOS-Drift service operators. As a consequence, the service is free of charge for the registered users.
Being operated by national services, the NOOS-Drift service is expected to run on the long term.
Contractually, its operation is ensured until 31st March 2021. After this date, any drift forecast service provider is free to disconnect its service from the NOOS-Drift system, provided a notification is given 3 months in advance.
The NOOS-Drift service will continue to be operated as long as minimum 2 model service providers are connected to the NOOS-Drift distributed system.
Whenever using NOOS-Drift products and results in derived products, presentations or publications, credits to NOOS-Drift and the Copernicus Marine Service must be clearly visible.
More information can be found in the Copernicus Marine Service licence : http://marine.copernicus.eu/services-portfolio/service-commitments-and-licence/
Although NOOS-Drift is operated on a best effort basis, NOOS-Drift consortium and the NOOS-Drift model service providers do not warrant that NOOS-Drift products will be free from errors or omissions, that such errors or omissions can be rectified or that users will have uninterrupted access to NOOS-Drift products and services.
More generally NOOS-Drift consortium and the NOOS-Drift model service providers exclude all other warranties, conditions, terms, undertakings, obligations whether expressed or implied by statute including but not limited to the implied warranty of satisfactory quality and fitness for a particular purpose or otherwise to the fullest extent permitted by the law.
By using NOOS-Drift service, products or information, the user acknowledges and accepts the present disclaimer and the conditions of use of the service.
