The European Space Agency (ESA) is planning a 2-year project to look at how Storm Surge forecasting systems and applications can be improved through the innovative use of ocean, land and atmospheric satellite observations. Recommendations and Actions of the first JCOMM Symposium on Storm Surges (JCOMM2007SSS, see http://www.surgesymposium.org/) serve as a baseline list of potential activities for this project, as these provide the most up-to-date reference of the International consensus on the key activities required to develop Storm Surge capabilities. A 2-day User Consultation Meeting was held from 17 to 18 September 2009, in Venice, Italy, in order for experts and potential users of the project to define the detailed set of user requirements for the project, including identifying the priority Earth Observation (EO) information, services and priority regions of interest. Input from this meeting was to be analysed and used to define the scope of the ESA Storm surge Project and prioritise the activities. The Meeting was jointly sponsored and supported by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, in the framework of the UNESCO project on “Enhancing regional capabilities for Coastal Hazards Forecasting and Data Portal Systems. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) joins to support this initiative, in the context of the implementation of comprehensive Storm Surge Watch Schemes (SSWS). The experts and interested users participating in the Meeting had very productive discussion. Following the successful scientific forum at JCOMM2007SSS, the participants agreed that this ESA project would be timely in advancing the storm surge application tools by enhanced use of EO information. The discussion for one and half days was focused on; 1) current use of satellite data; 2) current capability of storm surge models, and; 3) user requirements for storm surge applications. Based on the reports and recommendations by the breakout groups, the scope of the project was designed as “Development and Demonstration of EO to improve Storm Surge applications”, by addressing following topics: • Prototyping techniques built on established research results • Processing chain/satellite synergy/model/assimilation development • Production of a test data sets meeting users’ needs • Validation/verification/uncertainties/inter-comparison • Diagnostic data sets/climatology/database • Demonstration exploitation (modelling, assimilation, new products, prediction, databases, case studies, prototype services for a set of committed user/locations etc) All participating experts agreed that, although great deal of useful EO information and application tools exist, sufficient user information on EO data availability is missing, and that the project needs to work on providing easy access supported by user tools and documentation on useful EO data sets in the Storm Surge application groups, as a matter of priority. Spatial/temporal resolution and coverage of the satellite data was also recognized as an issue. The participants also emphasized that the project should consider both tropical and mid latitude (sub-tropical) cases, e.g., North Sea, Adriatic, Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal, Western Pacific (Korea, Japan, China), Australia, and Gulf of Mexico. The ESA noted that the region of interest can be defined and amended based on the level of users’ interest in the region, which will be reflected in the User Requirements and Letter of user commitment that are expected to submit by December 2009. All interested countries, agencies, and storm surge communities are invited to submit their requirement in due course – a template can be found at http://dup.esrin.esa.it/news/news192.asp .

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