INTRODUCTION

The following trends are coming up more and more in numerical modeling in case of typical river and coastal engineering applications:

• Passive -> Interactive modeling
• Mono-disciplinary -> Integrated modeling
• Solitary -> Social modeling
• Local -> Remote modeling
• Handcrafted -> Industrialized model setup

This is mainly a result of the increasing computational power and the groing wish of stakeholders to take part in design and engineering processes. Also, we want to model more processes in more detail on a larger scale, and at the same time have faster and faster models.

Nowadays stakeholders are involved in engineering projects more and more in an early (design) phase of the project. They want to think along and talk about their interests, instead of having an engineer or researcher tell them what's best for them.  

INTERACTIVE MODELING

With interactive modeling, stakeholders can play around with a model while running by creating measures in the domain, and directly see the effect. For the engineer it is easier to explain them how the physical system works, and what the result of certain measures may be. It is therefore potentially a great communication tool!

Social (interactive) modeling by stakeholders

In addition, it can be a great way to gain a first understanding of the physical system at the start of a project. There is no need for a large number of different model runs when you can simply adjust the model while running and directly see the effect.

MODELS

At DELTARES a number of numerical models have been extended with a functionality that allows for communication with the model whbile running. This has currently been implemented in XBeach and Delft3D-FM (see oss.deltares.nl for more information on these models). Available applications are, for instance: the Storm Impact Tool, in which a sand bar or nourishment can be interactively implebemented, and the Harbor Design Tool in which the effect of harbor structures (e.g. jetties) can  be assessed.

Example interactive models (left: Storm Impact Model, right: Harbor Design Tool)

FURTHER READING

Baart_etal_2014 (Interactive Flood Modeling)

Hoekstra_etal_2013 (Harbor Design Tool)

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