DEVELOPING THE PERSIAN GULF WAVE FORECAST SYSTEM

The Persian Gulf is one the most crowded navigation corridors which hosts a significant portion of world’s energy and cargo transports. Considering the numerous offshore and onshore constructions, drillings and oil and gas platforms in the region, the demand for a reliable met-ocean forecast system has been highly increased in recent years. Thus, Port and Maritime Organization (PMO) of Iran, as the authorized and responsible entity to meet the marine and coastal needs of the country, introduced the Persian Gulf Forecasting System project in 2014. The project, which includes the state of art modeling of wind field, waves and currents in the Persian Gulf, was awarded to K. N. Toosi University of Technology and Institute of Geophysics (University of Tehran). The waves are simulated by introducing the modelled wind field to the wave generation/propagation model. The present paper offers the development of the wave forecast system which has been calibrated and verified for the Persian Gulf. Figure 1 illustrates the study area and available measured data.