MULTI-DIMENSIONAL ERROR ANALYSIS OF NEARSHORE WAVE MODELING TOOLS, WITH APPLICATION TOWARD DATA-DRIVEN BOUNDARY CORRECTION

Abstract

As the forecasting models become more sophisticated in their physics and possible depictions of the nearshore hydrodynamics, they also become increasingly sensitive to errors in the inputs, such as errors in the specification of boundary information (lateral boundary conditions, initial boundary conditions, etc). Evaluation of the errors on the boundary is less straightforward, and is the subject of this study. The model under investigation herein is the Delft3D modeling suite, developed at Deltares (formerly Delft Hydraulics) in Delft, the Netherlands. Coupling of the wave (SWAN) and hydrodynamic (FLOW) model requires care at the lateral boundaries in order to balance run time and error growth. To this extent, we will use perturbation method and spatio-temporal analysis method such as Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis to determine the various scales of motion in the flow field and the extent of their response to imposed boundary errors.