Jenny Brown (NOC), Ivan Haigh (UoS), Tim Pullen (HRW)
To apply for this project please click here. Tick programme type – Research, tick Full-time or Part-time, select Academic year – ‘2024/25, Faculty Environmental and Life Sciences’, search text – ‘PhD Ocean & Earth Science (FLOOD CDT)’. In Section 2 of the application form you should insert the name of the project and supervisor(s) you are interested in applying for.
Rationale:
A 1m rise in mean sea level is almost certain this century and it is estimated that 20% of England’s coastal defences could fail under just half this rise (Committee on Climate Change, 2018). Ambitious climate adaptation plans may protect 400,000 – 500,000 people, but we cannot build infinitely high sea walls. Better ways to forecast and respond to coastal hazards are essential. It is critical to identify what wave-tide process drive different types of wave overtopping and understand how they interact with varying beach-structure profiles. Future sea levels and beach lowering are likely to change the combinations of processes that pose the greatest hazard. Identification of the tipping points in overtopping hazard drives is crucial for strategic management and response planning. The research will identify key process interactions that cause asymmetry in wave overtopping hazard during a tidal cycle. Using WireWall wave overtopping observations, numerical tools will be calibrated prior to exploring climate and sea level scenarios aimed at investigating future coastal dynamics that could influence hazard response protocols and management.
Methodology:
Wave overtopping frequency, duration and intensity observations collected at Dawlish and Penzance between March 2021 and March 2022 will be analysed to identify event-scale interactions that mediate wave overtopping conditions. Advanced numerical tools (Bayonet GPE) that accompany industry guidance for predicting overtopping hazard (EurOtop) will be used to isolate process contributions and expand the parameter space to include additional coastal structures and conditions. The impacts of changing sea level and beach level will be simulated to identify trigger levels in overtopping hazard. The process understanding and climate impacts analysis will be shared with coastal hazard managers (e.g., the Environment Agency and Network Rail). At Dawlish the new understanding will be compared with safety protocols for train operations to identify potential optimisations that could reduce delay and cancellation costs. Specific training will include:
- Programming in Matlab or Python.
- Analysis of coastal monitoring data collected by the National Network or Regional Coastal Monitoring Programmes.
- Analysis of the novel WireWall wave overtopping measurements.
- Participation in HR Wallingford’s wave action on coastal structures course will teach the candidate about the empirical relations used to predict overtopping.
- Learning to use numerical tools to predict wave overtopping hazard in response to different wave, water level and beach-structure profile conditions.
Location:
Hosted at the National Oceanography Centre, degree awarded by University of Southampton
Background Reading:
- Enríquez, …, Haigh (2022) Predictable changes in extreme sea levels and coastal flood risk due to long‐term tidal cycles. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JC018157
- Yelland, Brown, …, Pullen, … (2023) A system for in-situ, wave-by-wave measurements of the speed and volume of coastal overtopping. Communications Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1038/s44172-023-00058-3
- Wyncoll, Haigh, Gouldby, et al. (2016) Spatial analysis and simulation of extreme coastal flooding scenarios for national-scale emergency planning. 3rd European Conference on Flood Risk Management, https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/20160701001
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