Scientists are looking to combine weather and wave data with the latest digital and AI technologies to develop a more accurate way of forecasting coastal flooding.
The SPLASH: digital approaches to predict wave hazards initiative aims to build a coastal overtopping warning tool that can be deployed at locations along the UK coastline.
To develop it, researchers will analyse new and existing earth observation data to better understand how processes such as winds, tides, coastal sheltering, and waves interact across a coastal area.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms will also be trained to predict potential changes in the wave overtopping hazard across regions of the coastline, and the risk any flooding incidents might pose to life, property and infrastructure.
This will ultimately result in the creation of a digital twin of wave overtopping, in which machine learning has been applied to produce a warning tool using model predictions of wind, waves and water level.
The SPLASH project is being led by
Dr Nieves Valiente
and colleagues
Dr Christopher Stokes
and
Dr Tim Poate
at the University of Plymouth, working alongside researchers from the National Oceanographic Centre (NOC).
With sea level rise accelerating and coastal populations increasing, the researchers say the need for accurate tools to predict natural hazards and mitigate damage to infrastructure, property and human life has never been more urgent.
Dr Nieves Valiente
