Port of London authority tidal monitoring system

OceanWise has recently designed and delivered a complete tidal monitoring system, comprising tide gauges, telemetry equipment, servers, databases, system control, data management and display software to the Port of London Authority (POLA). The system comprises a total of 22 monitoring stations and covers a 30 km stretch of the River Thames, from the City of London to the Outer Thames Estuary. The system utilises hardware from Valeport and others, with OceanWise providing software, system design and integration, and installation. Locally known as `POLATIDE 5', the system is fully configurable and extensible and is already being deployed at other sites, as well as providing an update to OceanWise's subscription based marine data management and publishing service, Port-Log.net. This paper provides an overview of the system and describes in detail how POLA has benefited from the latest technologies, including Internet and open source technologies, to improve on POLA's existing system (POLATIDE 4) that had been operational since 1990. The system was installed in Oct 2013 and after rigorous testing and commissioning over a six month period went live in Mar 2014.