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Introduction

TimeA tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain. Depending on its location and strength, a tropical cyclone is referred to by names such as hurricane typhoon or tropical cyclone. Within Delft3D-FLOW time-series for space varying wind velocity components (east-west and south-north) and atmospheric pressure on a Spiderweb grid can be used to simulate the impact of tropical cyclonesuch an event. For more information about these possibilities one is referred to the Delft3D-FLOW manual. 

Usage of the toolbox

The Tropical Cyclone toolbox makes it possible to computes wind field and pressure drop generated by a cyclone. All it takes are basically three steps

1. Determine the track of the cyclone
   1. 'Draw track' is used to draw a cyclone track with the mouse
      1. First select the time (start and time step) 
      2. Secondly determine other settings like Rmax or Pdrop. Which settings can selected depends on the 'Method selected in the Toolbox. Default is the Vmax, Pd and Rmax approach
   2. 'Load track' is used to load an previous saved track which was defined in Dashboard
   3.  It is also possible to load tracks of cyclones (*.cyc) from available databases using 'Import Track' from sources of the JTWC, NHC or UNISYS.
2. Define a number of settings related to the spiderweb under 'Spiderweb Parameters', such as the directional bins and radial bins that are used to define aspects of the spiderweb.
3. Click on 'Compute cyclone' to generate a spider web file (*. spw) containing wind field and pressure drop which can be imported in Delft3D-FLOW.
   

The possibilities of Delft Dashboard for simulation tropical cyclones in Delft3D-FLOW is also showed in Tutorial 3: Tsnuami wave modelling.

Figure: Example of the track of a tropical cyclone generated by Delft Dashboard for the coast of Bangladesh.