Wing Yan Man

Motivation

Predictions on the development of the Zandmotor have been made for the next 20 years. However, users are more interested in the influence of the Zandmotor on their beach activities on a shorter term. Future direct users will be the inhabitants of the area, steady recreational visitors, entrepreneurs and nature lovers. More general audience will be occasional recreational visitors and general interested. Questions are raised, such as ‘Is it safe for me to swim tomorrow?’, ‘How far do I have to walk to the beach?’ and ‘Am I going to lose profits due to low tourism rates?’. Especially retaining swimmer safety is a high priority, since these concerns the lives of citizens. Therefore, information on the short term morphological behavior of the Zandmotor is desired.

Research questions

What is the short term morphological behavior of the Zandmotor to present day wave climate of the North Sea?  

• Which of the modeled parameters and events are dominant for morphological response?
•  How can the past wave climate be classified in distinctive wave climate scenarios?
•  Which parameters should be used to give an accurate prediction of the behavior within a short time limit?
•  Which parameters on the Zandmotor morphology are desired by the parties involved?  

Objective & Approach

The objective of this research is to optimize the existing model in order to give an accurate 2 weekly forecast of the Zandmotor development within one day.

To optimize the model, the morphologic response of the Zandmotor will be hindcast with the wave conditions from July 2011 in the model Delft3D. These results will be validated with the measured data. During this process, also future wave climate scenarios will be implemented to predict the morphologic behavior of the Zandmotor.  

Update

The first hindcast with wave conditions from 9th of July to 31st of August 2011 has been made with the existing model. The pictures above show the results on 9th of July, 24th of July and 31st of August 2011.