Development of a regional coastal management decision-aided system. Part A: Establishment of an automatic numerical simulation program

• An automatic numerical simulation program is established for coastal waters.
• A thorough automatic process of hydrodynamic numerical simulation is achieved.
• This program can be easily transplanted into MGIS and other similar information system.
• This program can be set up and then automatically run without much user intervention.

An automatic numerical simulation program is established for coastal waters. The program is developed based on an idea of nested model. The whole process of engineering data acquisition, computational domain drafting, computational grid generation, initial and open boundary condition abstraction, parameter settings, program running and simulation results extraction is automatically carried out. The program structure and the implementation are described in detail. Based on the requirements of computational stability and efficiency, one model bank and two rule sets are established. Different from existing hydrodynamic programs, this program achieves a thorough automatic process, which can be set up and then automatically run without much user intervention. Being compiled into an EXE file, it can be easily transplanted into MGIS and other similar information system.