With Tropical Storm Barry strengthening in the Gulf, we wanted to give a quick reminder about a few features in GOMsmart (and ArcGIS). First, storm forecasts are made in advance of the National Hurricane Center's track/cone as soon as a weather disturbance enters the region (well outside of the northern Gulf of Mexico). This forecast uses historical tracks, the NHC's region where a storm is likely to form, and the current location to calculate a likely path if the storm does form. The images below, taken from screen captures of GOMsmart on a phone, show the last forecast made by Earth Science Associates on the left, with the first forecast by the NHC after it became a tropical depression on the right.
We also forecast wind speeds at each platform based on the NHC's forecast wind radii as seen in the map. When clicking on a platform in the Custom Map of GOMsmart (or simply clicking a platform on the Main page), one of the options, in addition to Reports, Charts and Downloads, is Wind Speed Forecast. This option is also coming to ArcGIS in the next few weeks.
This graphs the wind speed, over time, as the storm passes, hopefully giving more time for planning and efficient evacuation operations. The graph below shows estimated wind speeds at the Prince TLP in Ewing Bank 1003.
An overview of the Bidding Forecast/Block Evaluation portion of the Business Planning Add-on to GOM3 will be held on Wednesday, July 24th, at 1:30 PM CDT. This important webinar is free and will provide information on the statistics that go into our forecasts and highlights of some of the newest additions, including maps of individual variables that go into the analysis and forecasts of the BOEM's MROV/ADV values to provide guidance on the likelihood of rejection. This is an opportunity to learn about how companies have behaved based on the state of the Gulf in the past, how those factors have correlated with their bidding strategies and how it may provide competitive advantages in the future. There will also be time to go give feedback about some of our future plans to hone the analysis for even greater accuracy.
The map below is a density map of deepwater current leases as of June 28th. The importance of proximity to other active leases varies by company and such statistics are calculated separately for different analyses before being combined to estimate the likelihood of receiving a bid and an estimated high bid amount. Registration is available here.
The next GOMsmart webinar will be held on Thursday, July 25th. This small webinar is an introductory overview and will go over the layout of GOMsmart, how the data is put together and processed and will provide a chance to ask questions and offer suggestions. Registration is now available here.
ArcGIS 10.2.x support from Esri has officially ended as of July 1st. As such, we can no longer support 10.2.x versions at this time.
We also will take this opportunity to announce that we will end support for ArcGIS 10.3.x in early 2020. Esri will end support for ArcGIS 10.3.x late next year, but with so many versions, including ArcGIS Pro 2.3 and above, we are trying to limit how many versions can properly be handled with our tools and data. We have not yet begun official support for version 10.7.1 yet, but don't expect issues with that transition. More details on ArcGIS Desktop's life cycle can be found here.