Helzel Messtechnik GmbH articles

Coastal radar has become an increasingly important monitoring tool for hazard management and environmental protection

During the past few years remote ocean sensing by HF (highfrequency) radar has become more and more valuable to modern coastal management. lt offers an insight into the dynamics of the coastal seas for a variety of applications without ever leaving dry land. For example, search and rescue (SAR) operations can narrow down the search radius for peopleost overboard, po

On May 29, 2017 a meteorological. 2m high tsunami hit the Dutch. coast. Serious injuries were. Avoided only because of the. timing – the wave hit beaches at about. 5:45am local time. Some 50km southwest of. Zandvoort, where the wave was observed,. there are two WERA (WavE RAdar) ocean. radar systems, at Monster and Ouddorp. (Figure 1). These systems are owned by. Rijkswaterstaat (part of the Dutch Ministry of. Infrastructure and the Environment) and. measure the ocean surface currents a

To fulfill its mission to “continually improve the Port of Rotterdam and to make it the safest, most efficient and most sustainable port in the world“, Rijkswaterstaat, part of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment, decided in 2014 to improve the quality and reliability of the ocean current forecasting. The forecasting is based on a hydrodynamic model operated by Rijkswaterstaat. A transition is currently being prepared, in which the operational 2D model will be replaced

High-Frequency (HF) radars are operated in the 3-30 MHz frequency band and are known to cover ranges up to several hundred kilometers. Low power HF radar systems have been developed especially for oceanographic applications. They use electromagnetic surface wave propagation along the salty ocean. The WERA HF radar system transmits an average power of 30 watts but it achieves detection ranges up to 200 kilometers, which are far beyond the conventional microwave radar coverage. Due to external