TideNet: A Web-Based Tidal Data Access, Processing and Analysis Tool, Part 1 -NWS Tidal Database

This Coastal and Hydraulics Engineering Technical Note (CHETN) describes the second module of the MetOcnDat (Meteorological and Oceanographic or Metocean) system, called TideNet. The MetOcnDat modular system in development consists of toolboxes for waves, tides, and river flow databases that will facilitate conversion of data used in input files for numerical models and provide tabular and graphical information for project planning and design reports. TideNet is a web-based Graphical-User-Interface (GUI) data management tool that allows users to access, process, and analyze tide data available from different tidal databases. This first application of TideNet deals only with tide data from the National Weather Service (NWS) database used in various coastal, ocean, and marine engineering applications. Metocean data include winds, waves, tides (water levels and currents), and river discharges. The first two Technical Notes (TNs) in the MetOcnDat system series (Demirbilek et al. 2013; Wilson et al. 2012) described the application of WaveNet, a companion module of TideNet, for the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) buoy and Wave Information Stduy (WIS) databases. The TideNet is a web-based GUI that provides users with GIS mapping tools to query tide data sources in a desired geographic region of USA and its territories. Users can select a tide data source through the Google Map interface to view data and parameters of interest. The utilities of TideNet available at the selected tide data source can query the data source, then plot, analyze, and extract tidal information based on a user-specified time window and output data in different formats for engineering applications. TideNet has additional post-processing capabilities to produce tables and figures and prepare input files for numerical models.