BAMOS
Dec 2017
19
Participants voting on research priorities during one of the
round-tables on the final day of the Symposium.
38 presentations organised broadly into three themes: open
ocean processes; ocean and coastal engineering; and coastal
and nearshore processes. Building further on the Second
Symposium, a particular focus was identifying waves research
links spanning the interface between the deep and nearshore
ocean, as well as waves research in support of offshore and
coastal industries, including research into wave-structure
interactions.
One of the activities of the FOO Surface Waves Working Group is
to identify a set of national priorities relating to waves research.
This is being undertaken following a process initially described
by Sutherland et al. (2011) —a widely used method for setting
research priorities in a collaborative manner. In the months
prior to the Symposium, a ‘“long list” of possible research
activities had been gathered from the wider community via
an online survey. The Symposium provided the opportunity to
discuss and prioritise this “long list”. Approximately half a day
was devoted to this process, through a series of round-tables,
covering 11 categories. Each category consisted of around 20
priorities from the “long list”. The round-tables discussed the
priorities, edited them where appropriate and came up with a
ranking within each category through a simple voting process.
Further assessment of these priorities and their rankings is
currently underway, with the aim to publish a white paper
and/or peer-reviewed publication in 2018.
A Fourth Symposium has been scheduled for November 2019
in Melbourne. It is planned to be held in conjunction with the
2nd International Workshop on Waves, Storm Surges and Coastal
Hazards, to be hosted by The University of Melbourne. This
Workshop is a leading international conference on ocean waves
(Breivik et al., 2015; Brievik et al., 2017), and is an extension
of (and amalgamation with two other workshop series) the
successful International Workshop on Wave Hindcasting and
Forecasting series, which has been held every 2–3 years since
1986. The synergy of these closely related meetings will benefit
the Australian MetOcean research community and will promote
the Australian Wind-Waves Symposium to the international
community.
The University of Western Australia (UWA Oceans Institute
and Faculty of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences),
Oceanworks (a collaboration between Woodside FutureLab
and The University of Western Australia) and the Bureau of
Meteorology are thanked for their generous support (financial
and resources) to the Symposium.
References
Breivik, Ø., Swail, V., Babanin, A.V. and Horsburgh, K., 2015. The
International Workshop on Wave Hindcasting and Forecasting
and the Coastal Hazards Symposium, Ocean Dynamics.
65(5):761–771. doi:10.1007/s10236-015-0827-9б.
Breivik, Ø., Alves, J.H., Greenslade, D., Horsburgh, K. and Swail,
V., 2017. The 14th International Workshop on Wave Hindcasting
and Forecasting and the 5th Coastal Hazards Symposium, Ocean
Dynamics, Vol. 67, 551–556. doi:10.1007/s10236-017-1033-8
Day, K.A. (editor), 2010. Proceedings of the Australian Wind
Waves Research Science Symposium, CAWCR Technical Report
No. 29. Available at: http://www.cawcr.gov.au/publications/
technicalreports/CTR_029.pdf
Greenslade, D., Hemer, M., Symonds, G., and Craig, P., 2010.
Wind waves research in Australia, Bulletin of the Australian
Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, 23, 103–107.
Greenslade, D., Hemer, M., Babanin, A. and Symonds, G., 2013.
The Second Australian Wind-waves Symposium, Bulletin of the
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, 26, 117–
118.
Sutherland, W.J., Fleishman, E., Mascia, M.B., Pretty, J. and Rudd,
M.A., 2011. Methods for Collaboratively Identifying Research
Priorities and Emerging Issues in Science and Policy, Methods in
Ecology and Evolution, 2(3): 238–47.