ICoD was established in 1988 within the framework of the Foundation for International Studies at the University of Malta. ICoD forms part of a network of specialised Centres pertaining to the Open Partial Agreement of the Council of Europe on Major Natural and Technological Hazards (EUR-OPA). In the scope of several international projects ICoD runs the following three major programmes: environmental modelling, remote sensing and coastal zone management. ICoD works on research, development and implementation of mathematical models for different environmental systems: atmosphere, atmospheric aerosol (dust) transport and ocean (www.icod.org.mt). Through the COMPASS project funded by 4th Italo-Maltese project, the environmental modelling group was established, gathering international specialists in the atmospheric and ocean modelling whom designed and developed a coupled operational atmosphere-ocean forecasting suite. ICoD participated in the following EU funded projects: RAMSES (1988-2000), LIFE Project-Integrated Management of Specially Protected Coastal Areas in Malta (2000-2003), and has been recently granted by the EU Project GAIANET (2001-2002).

ICoD will bring to the project experience in operational atmospheric and marine modelling gained through the RAMSES project, in which ICoD was providing meteo-marine forecasts to support monitoring oil-slick transport condition. Within RAMSES, atmospheric, ocean thermodynamic and wave daily forecast data were provided to other project partners. In the EU GAIANET project (a take-up of RAMSES) further improvements of the ICoD meteo-marine modelling system has been implemented.

Within the COMPASS project, ICoD operationally made systematic comparisons during 2-year period of the surface wind predictions evaluated by the ICoD?s atmospheric model with ERS-2 wind scatterometer observations.