The Irish National Tide Gauge Network is an on-going development involving the Marine Institute and a number of organizations in the public and private sectors to develop a permanent tidal monitoring infrastructure, ultimately consisting off between 35 and 40 stations. The project is currently entering year 5 of an anticipated 10 year program.
The principle objectives are to involve local organisations (e.g. county councils) to assist them with local issues related to water level monitoring and to bring all operational tide gauges into a centrally managed national infrastructure.
The current activities of the Network include.
Strategic development of the network to work with new parties enabling the full resolution of the tidal regime around Ireland.
Roll out of GSM enabled data logging and telecommunications equipment for the central collection of data.
High precision site surveys to enable all data to be reported relative to the national datum (ordnance survey datum Malin Head).
Quality control of the stations to determine what outstanding work is required to get the best possible data.
The products from the network are wide-ranging and will be available as work progresses:
Real-time data to an Internet site to support recreational users, navigation and commercial activities.
Tidal predictions, both in the form of software tools and paper publications.
Flood warning.
Long term sea level variability.
NVM Limited with association from their partners in OTT continue to provide assistance to the Tidal Gauge Networks program through provision of new instrumentation, installation and setup of new stations, continuous monitoring support and service of existing stations.
