Improving coastal monitoring and forecasting systems through interoperable OGC API EDR-based data services

Effective coastal monitoring and forecasting systems rely on the availability and timeliness of interoperable, standardized, and accessible marine data across observational, modelling and service layers. Fragmented data formats, legacy infrastructures, and non-standardized access mechanisms remain significant barriers to the seamless integration of ocean observations into operational monitoring and forecasting systems and downstream applications.

This study presents the development of a standards-based data workflow designed to enhance interoperability, scalability, and facilitate marine data integration, through the adoption of international standards and best practices. The proposed approach focuses on establishing robust data flows that transform, validate, and harmonize heterogeneous datasets (e.g., in situ near-real-time observations and numerical model outputs) into NetCDF format. Standardized and programmatic access to these datasets is enabled though the OGC API Environmental Data Retrieval protocol, implemented using the pygeoapi platform. By adopting open standards and service-oriented architectures, this framework enables efficient spatio-temporal querying of ocean variables, facilitating their assimilation into forecasting systems, decision-support tools, and customized applications. In parallel, geoportal interfaces were updated to integrate the new OGC API EDR services, ensuring that interoperable data access is available both through machine-to-machine interfaces and user-friendly graphical tools, supporting a broad range of user profiles and promoting citizen involvement and ocean literacy.

By addressing interoperability at the data, service, and user-interface levels, this work demonstrates how standardized data infrastructures are key enablers for improved, scalable, and sustainable coastal monitoring and forecasting capabilities.