In 1997, the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science (USF/CMS) established the Coastal Ocean Monitoring Prediction System (COMPS) as an ongoing regional coastal ocean observing program operating along the Gulf of Mexico's west Florida coast. Implemented as a State of Florida legislative initiative, the COMPS program provides real-time data for emergency management use along with describing and understanding the relevant physical processes that control coastal flooding, the distribution of water properties affecting red tides, fisheries recruitment, oil spills and Coast Guard search and rescue operations. COMPS program assets include arrays of offshore buoys and coastal tidal stations for surface meteorology and in-water measurement of temperature, salinity, and currents, and sea level; along with High Frequency Radar (HFR) installations for offshore surface-current velocity field and direction measurements. USF/CMS COMPS is an active member of the Southeast Coastal Ocean Observing Regional Association (SECOORA) whose goal is to develop a regional coastal ocean observing system for the southeast (NC, SC, GA, FL) United States - all part of the ever evolving NOAA Integrated Ocean Observing system (IOOS).
