SURF-SHYFEM Platform v1.0.0 Released — First Official Version!

Initial public release of the SURF-SHYFEM platform, introducing the unstructured-grid component of SURF for flexible coastal and shelf modelling applications.

Today marks the first official release of SURF-SHYFEM, the unstructured-grid component of the SURF platform (Structured and Unstructured grid Relocatable ocean platform for Forecasting).

SURF-SHYFEM is part of an innovative, open-source ocean modeling framework designed to configure, execute, and analyze analyse high-resolution nested ocean models in any region within a large-scale Ocean Forecasting, Analysis and Reanalysis System.

The system integrates the well-established SHYFEM unstructured-grid ocean model, ideal for accurately modeling complex coastal dynamics, and wraps it into a user-friendly environment that lowers the barrier traditionally associated with numerical ocean modeling and downscaling workflows.

To support immediate operational use and providing everything needed to kickstart your research project, SURF-SHYFEM is distributed with:

• Pre-configured VirtualBox VM image containing all required software dependencies
• Source code package including SHYFEM with pre- and post-processing utilities
• JSON configuration template for fast, transparent experiment setup
• Input static data package (bathymetry, coastlines)
• Collection of case studies with complete input forcing datasets and reference outputs

This first release represents an important step toward making relocatable ocean modeling accessible, portable, and reproducible for a broad community of researchers, students, and operational users. It enables limited-area ocean forecasts to be performed on standard personal computers and laptops, extending advanced ocean modeling capabilities beyond traditional HPC environments.